So Tell Me Now, And I Won't Ask Again
by Haleine Delail
Summary: Martha Jones is brave and clever and strong, and has the opportunity of a lifetime. She could have everything she wants and more, but it might come with a terrible price. What will she choose to do? Or will the object of her desires choose for her?
1. Chapter 1

**You can call it what you want: prolific, creative, tenacious. I'm choosing NOT to think about it as a prodigious lack of desire to do the actual work that's plaguing me and giving me spring fever, even though that's exactly what it is.**

**But fresh on the heels of finishing my "Little Angels" story here is my next offering. It came about while listening to a song by the Shirelles.**

**It is a stand-alone. It is totally, completely, 100% a "ship" fic, and the sci-fi/adventure elements are simply an excuse to push the real action forward. It is, as usual, Martha and Ten, but their relationship is canon. Angsty, longing companion travels alongside a thick, clueless Doctor. You know the drill.**

**Again, this will not be epic... it's just a toe-dipper. Enjoy.**

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**_"Tonight you're mine completely / You give your love so sweetly…_**

**_Tonight the light of love is your eyes / But will you love me tomorrow?_**

**_Is this a lasting treasure? / Or just a moment's pleasure?_**

**_Can I believe the magic of your sigh? / Will you still love me tomorrow?_**

**_I'd like to know that your love / Is love I can be sure of_**

**_So tell me now, and I won't ask again…"_**

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These were the moments that both made her life worth living, and made it miserable. It was a moment she would almost certainly never be able to tell anyone about because, frankly, who would believe it?

A giant robot had stepped on the Chief Soothsayer of the planet Lewogue, crushing her ribs, and was now dragging her away. She was Nayovi, one of the kindest, cleverest beings Martha Jones had ever met. She buried her face in the Doctor's sleeve in order to stifle a scream, as the _crunch_ echoed through the space.

"Casualties of war," he sighed, putting his arm around her. "Are you all right?"

She nodded, wondering if she might vomit, but the feeling quickly passed. It was replaced by another feeling, almost as woozy, and lately almost as unpleasant.

_He has his arm around me. _

"Bloody Lewogue," he spat. "A war of philosophy rages for five thousand years between a planet of machines and a planet of clairvoyants, you'd think that the beings capable of logic would recognise the inherent stalemate in that scenario and have the good sense to try to end it, but noooo!"

"Five _thousand_ years?"

"Well, technically four-thousand-eight hundred and twenty one," he said. "No, hold on… twenty two. And about every eighty or so, the Cheh-Tim Automatons attack this planet and ravage it," he explained. "That's why it's not exactly a booming metropolis."

"Why don't they just leave?" she asked.

"Pride," he said harshly. He looked at her with steely brown eyes. "Because they have to be _right._"

The robots were destructive but thick, and the time travellers had managed not to alert them to their presence. Suddenly, they heard Nayovi groan, and Martha and the Doctor locked eyes. Their vantage point was round the corner of some kind of abandoned shed, and from there, they could watch Nayovi being taken God knew where, but now they knew that she was alive. The look on Martha's face was one of determination and resilience, cleverness, and in her eyes, the Doctor read volumes. He groaned inwardly, because he knew what she was about to do, and he knew he couldn't stop her. Worse, he knew that it was the _right_ thing for her to do, and it was why he liked her.

"Okay, but listen to me, Martha, you stay out of sight!" he ordered her. "Do you what you have to do, but don't let them catch you. And wait for your moment – it's going to take me a few minutes to get to the control room!"

"Fine," she said, making to run.

"Wait!" he said, grabbing her arm. "Her skeletal structure is like yours and mine, but she doesn't have a liver, so be careful what you give her – if it's the wrong drug, it won't filter."

"Got it," she said, trying to run again.

He caught her arm once more. "And! Her clairvoyance is linked to cognition, and it's not rooted in time, it's much more changeable, and fragile like glass, not like you, so…"

"… make sure her ribs haven't punctured her lungs as first priority, so she doesn't go without oxygen and damage her brain – I get it! Now let me go!"

"Wow, you're clever. Be careful, Martha!"

By the time he'd finished talking, she was already running, heading for a lengthy canopy that ran along the side of the alleyway of the abandoned industrial park, about five feet off the ground. She was glad to be short, for once, as she only had to duck slightly to run along the inside and stay hidden from the Cheh-Tim giant.

She followed the robot and its victim round several corners, down streets, into alleys, twists, bends and turns. After perhaps a mile, suddenly, the robot let go of Nayovi, and let her limp body fall grotesquely to the pavement.

And then it just stood, staring at nothing, doing nothing.

The Doctor had made it into the control room of the Cheh-Tim spacecraft, and he'd used the buttons and levers and the robot's link with its ship to stop it moving. He'd told her to wait for her moment – _now _was her moment, though it was not ideal, and not, she knew, the situation the Doctor had had in mind for her. But even _he _was not perfect, and clearly something had gone wrong with his plan, and he wasn't able to get the robot out of the way just now.

So, even though the robot was still there, even though the danger had not necessarily passed, she had to act. She knew she wouldn't be able to get Nayovi to safety, not without help, but if she didn't work extremely quickly, the soothsayer would perish.

She ran out into the street and knelt beside the dying woman. She didn't want to move her too much because her ribs were likely very, very broken, but the Doctor had pointed out that unobstructing the lungs needed to come first. So Martha turned Nayovi onto her stomach, doing her best not to bend the body. She propped up Nayovi's chin with her hand, and patted her back.

"Nayovi? Nayovi, can you hear me?"

When there was no response, Martha reached down and opened Nayovi's eyes with her fingers. She repeated, "Nayovi? Say something if you can hear me."

"Mmmm," was all that the limp woman could muster, but it let Martha know that she was alive. She still had a long way to go, but it was better than the alternative. She coughed, and as she did, blood came from her mouth.

That meant a punctured lung. That meant probable lack of oxygen to the brain, fairly soon. That meant Lewogue could very well lose its most trusted clairvoyant, even if she survived.

"Martha? Martha are you out there?" came the Doctor's voice, seemingly from nowhere.

"Yeah! Where are you?"

"I'm still in the control room. I'm having some trouble with the robot – I've got it stopped, but the retreat function is deadlocked. I can't get it to activate with the sonic! Looks like they saw me coming."

"How are you doing this?"

"Through the robot's connection with the ship," he answered. "Which means, if you can hear me, you're way too close to the thing."

"I don't have a choice, Doctor!"

"Martha, get her away from the robot right now!"

Martha sighed with exasperation. "Doctor, she's coughing up blood and her ribs are shattered! I can't just drag her out of here."

"Well, you need to do something because the control panel has a countdown on it, and in twenty seconds, the robot comes back to life and the remote system goes into deadlock as a safety feature and there will be nothing more I can do."

She screamed out in frustration, and finally said, "Okay! Come and help me!"

"I can't, Martha, I have to evacuate the city! If I can't stop the attack, then I have to get everyone out of here. This lot are stubborn, but they're not stupid, maybe…."

He continued to talk, but she stopped listening. She wanted to whine _Doctor, please don't leave me alone_, but she knew it would be a selfish thing to do, and she was afraid it would not work. Worse than that, she thought it might incur the one thing she didn't want: his disapproval. Her independence had always been something he had admired in her, even though, ironically, her desire to win his favour and to work at his side, just to be near him, was the very thing that drove her. These desires – well, he simply wasn't aware of them.

Or maybe he was, and he just chose to ignore them. That thought, even at a desperate moment like this one, gave Martha a cold shiver. To love, and not be loved in return... well, she had never known true heartache until she'd met the Doctor. She'd never known true love until then either, and she supposed now that to have the latter meant risking the former.

But what if he _really_ didn't know? The Doctor was many things, but he wasn't a mind-reader, at least not from a distance, and, she admitted to herself, she _had_ gone to great lengths to hide her feelings from him. She didn't really entertain any notion that he felt the same way about her, but what if there was a possibility there? What if there was a tiny bit of potential that she was throwing away? A spark that could perhaps be fanned with the right kind of care, a soft touch, some gentle encouragement? What if he was totally blind – could she help him see? Did the fact that he didn't _love _her mean that they couldn't be together? Already, they were very much together – they shared their lives with one another, why not their feelings? Why not some moments of intimacy, a mental space, why not a bed? Most people didn't begin in a relationship madly in love – they had to grow, earn it, learn to feel deeply about the other person. Was it really so strange to think that he could learn to love her if she took the initiative?

She knew she was just torturing herself, that these were the same thoughts she'd been having for months, ever since the Pentallian. They were nothing new – she loved the Doctor, nursed a hope, then she'd let it die again. At least this train of thought had evolved from simple acceptance of love and misery, which was a step in the right direction. Martha had always been taught never to _accept_ less than the best. In her mind, she was fairly certain she knew the score; she was a good friend to him, and though she may harbour some strong feelings, he was in love with someone else and that was that. But sometimes, especially late into the night when she stared at the ceiling and felt cold all alone in her bed, her heart would win over and she felt _she had to know_. Was this really all that would ever exist between them, or would she someday be able to reach into the Doctor's soul and find more?

And sometimes those moments would strike at inconvenient times. Like now, on Lewogue, talking to the Doctor through the mouth of a giant robot with less than twenty seconds until disaster…

And then she realised that there was still a woman dying in the street, and still a giant robot counting standing three feet away, counting down to attack.

"Martha, focus!" she scolded herself aloud, just before jumping into action.


	2. Chapter 2

II

The situation had gone from hopeless to merely dire, then fragile, and one week later, it was just a bit precarious. Helping Nayovi recover required practically twenty-four hour surveillance on Martha's part, and since the city dwellers had refused to evacuate, keeping the Cheh-Tim automatons at bay was sapping the Doctor's energy. Emergency services native to the planet were, as usual after a robot attack, busy round-the-clock tending to the injured civilians. Martha was pretty well on her own.

The Doctor had taught someone halfway clever to punch in the codes upon the console in the Cheh-Tim ship which would keep the link severed between the automatons and their mothership – a temporary cheat to override the sonic-resistant deadlock. But in order for anyone to do it so that he could have a few hours' rest, he had to work out the equations in advance. It was almost easier to stay awake and push through, but Martha, fully in caretaker mode, insisted that he sleep from time to time. Secretly, he was grateful for this – he really needed the rest.

For her part, she slept whenever Nayovi was sedated. On the first day, Martha had fashioned a makeshift lung pump using some oxygen reserves kept in the municipal centre of the city. After the fifth day, she was stable enough that Martha could examine her systems properly. The patient's eyes indicated no oxygen deprivation. Brainwaves were fairly normal for someone who was basically in a coma, and even functioned a bit outside the norm. Miraculously, only one of her kidneys had been damaged in the attack, and so, with the help of one of the planet's few briefly available medics, Martha removed the kidney, leaving one healthy. After that, it was all about waiting for the fever to pass, and keeping Nayovi still enough to allow herself to recover.

Martha had rarely seen the Doctor in thirteen days, and even given the situation, she felt the pang – she missed him. And not just because she loved the sound of his voice and the curve of his eyebrow and the shape of his body and the way he walked… but because he was her only friend, and she had no-one to talk to at the moment. For five minutes at a time, perhaps once a day, he would look in on her, make sure Nayovi was recovering, offer words of encouragement. Sometimes he would touch her hand. Then he would leave, not to be seen again until he was going back to the boarding house to sleep and wanted to let Martha know where to find him. She went back to the house for a change of clothes every now and then herself, caught a few winks, but that was it. All of her attention was devoted to Nayovi.

On the fourteenth day, the fever broke. The clairvoyant still could not move, but for the first time, her eyes opened and Martha saw sentience in them. Her speech did not yet make any sense, and Martha urged her not to try and talk, that it was a major step just to have her conscious, and that was all they needed to know for the moment. "Save your strength," Martha told her.

Nayovi's attendants had come back to work by then, and were wanting for something to do. Martha asked one of them to send word to the Doctor. Within ten minutes, the Time Lord was at Nayovi's bedside, alongside his exhausted companion.

"You didn't have to come," she said, squeezing his hand. "But I'm glad you're here." She longed to lay her head on his shoulder, and she supposed that it would probably be all right, but she refrained anyhow.

"Well, it's an important moment," he whispered. "Couldn't miss this."

"It'll be a while before she really wakes up," Martha said. "I'd have sent for you."

The Doctor looked at her and smirked, delighting in Martha's innocence, her benevolence, her utter selflessness. "Not _that _important moment. I came to congratulate _you_."

She smiled. "Me?"

"Of course," he said, returning the smile. "Your first patient. You cared for her all by yourself for two whole weeks, and you saved her. That's… _huge_."

Martha exhaled loudly. "Well, she doesn't have any brain damage, and her heart is fine, so it was easy."

"Martha," he said, still softly but a bit annoyed at her modesty. "Who worked out the fact that she had no brain damage, without an MRI, eh? The Cerebral Reparation Faerie? Who set seven broken ribs and wrapped them? Who kept her sedated just enough to keep her still but not poisoned? Oh, and by the way, who removed her bad kidney?"

"Me."

He smiled big. "That's right. It was you! She's not even human and you've done all this! You are _amazing_, Martha Jones, and I wanted to say… well, that. Amazing."

She stared back at him. "Thank you, Doctor." Their eyes didn't move for a long while.

She was exhausted, he could see that. She was sweaty, she hadn't worn makeup in days, and thick strands of hair hung in her face. She was wearing the shapeless brown uniform of a Lewogue laundry worker, and her brow was furrowed with worry. But she looked wonderful to him, radiant somehow, and never more clever nor more dynamic. She had never been more _Martha_ than she was right now, he had never seen her more true to herself, and that was brilliant.

He reached up without thinking and brushed her hair out of her eyes and behind her ear. This made her smile and look away from him, and that made him smile again in return.

He squeezed her shoulder, absently rubbing the knots out of her muscles. "Shall we start thinking about moving on? This lot – they'll be taking care of themselves before too long."

"Okay," she said. The light was wrong, otherwise, he would have seen her blush.

"I've been teaching Oysmark how to do the equations on his own," he told her. "Few days' time, I'll have the numbers to put up an airshield round the planet and ionise the atmosphere so that the automatons can't move. With the two of us doing it…" he clicked his fingers and stood up.

"Good," she said. "I'd like to stay with Nayovi until she's at least mobile."

"Of course," he agreed. "You can't leave her – she needs a proper doctor."

"Doctor," Martha protested.

"Stop it. You know it as well as I do. The only thing you're missing is the official seal."

She smiled weakly as he left the room. She sighed heavily as soon as she knew he was out of earshot.

Suddenly, Nayovi gasped. Her eyes few open, and Martha reached for her cold compress, and opened her mouth to speak. But the sight of Nayovi's kind eyes softening and making contact caused Martha to stop.

Quite clearly, Nayovi said, "_Sometimes when he looks at you, his eyes change, his head tilts, his lips go slack, and your entire being flushes – and you wonder. Sometimes in the morning when he first sees you, there is a moment of silence, as if something about you has taken his speech away, as if he is acting in a moment of reverence – and you wonder. And always he puts his trust in you, wants you to be you, wants you to be Martha – it's what he wants. Martha is what he wants, and you know this, and you wonder. A man who has seen time and space, what more could he seek than intelligence and individuality and initiative…"_

Martha's heart was racing, and her entire body was flushed with embarrassment and apprehension. She was a powerful clairvoyant; of course Martha's feelings were a neon sign to her, a flashing beacon.

"Nayovi, save your strength, love, you need to rest," Martha said, compressing the cloth against her forehead. "You don't want to bring the fever back."

"_Time together with time to spare, time to learn, time to share," _Nayovi whispered, her words becoming progressively less clear, her eyes closing slowly. _"So tell me now, and I won't ask again: will you still love me tomorrow?"_

With these words, she was out again, and Martha breathed a sigh of relief. She checked Nayovi's pulse and felt a pang of shame because she was relieved that her first patient was unconscious once more.


	3. Chapter 3

**Sorry this chapter is so short... but this all got written at once, and this was just how it broke up best. Hopefully quality will make up for lack of quantity. :-)**

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III

Martha had written down all the instructions and left behind a list of procedures in case of emergency. Nayovi would likely be fine, but it had only been twenty days since the attack, and she was far from fully recovered. But with Lewogue and its Chief Soothsayer safe, it was time for the Doctor and Martha Jones to move on.

She went into Nayovi's chamber to say goodbye. She was surprised at how sad she was, how attached she had become.

"Martha," she said as Martha entered sadly. "You look lovely."

"Thanks," Martha answered. "I feel much better in my own clothes."

"You look rested at last," Nayovi said sheepishly. "Thank you for giving so much of yourself. I would have died without your devotion and kindness – you and the Doctor both."

"It's what we do."

"Still. I must thank you properly."

"You have," Martha said, sitting down upon Nayovi's cot, taking her hand. "You may not think so, but you fought for your own life, Nayovi. It was hardly just me who saved you – you helped plenty. Seeing you awake and alive is thanks enough."

"Nevertheless, I have a gift for you."

Martha decided not to protest. Something in Nayovi's tone told her that this was a very important moment, and it should not be ruined by Martha's very British sense of self-deprecation.

"But first, I have a story to tell." Nayovi revealed in her right hand a small pink trinket, a model of some sort of winged creature. In her left, she revealed a blue trinket, a model of a creature with antlers. "In my right hand is Vaennar the Moth, he represents great truth in our society. This trinket is symbolic, but the spirit of Vaennar has the power to bring clarity. In my left, I have Aturra the Hart, who represents great desire. You can guess that invoking the spirit of Aturra is one of the more popular pasttimes of the people of Lewogue."

Martha remained silent, waited for the clairvoyant to continue.

Very pointedly, Nayovi said, "As you well know, Martha Jones, great desire does not always go hand-in-hand with great truth."

Martha caught a chill, as she had not forgotten the woman's words on the day when her fever broke. But Martha remained stoic.

"And as such, I have found that when the essences of Aturra and Vaennar are invoked in tandem, a different kind of clarity can be achieved," Nayovi continued. "An excellent example is a man called Dolino. Through the power of Aturra, he became the greatest Gladiator in the land, attained fame and fortune overnight, and became a very powerful, influential citizen. And through Vaennar, he realised that this scenario was his destiny, it was meant to be, for better or for worse.

"Another excellent example was Naphil. Aturra gave him freedom. He travelled the cosmos, experienced every land, every culture, every language he had ever heard of, and some that he had not heard of. His wanderlust was satisfied at last, but Vaennar showed him he was not a man of the universe. In fact, his family languished in his absence and he found that his own soul languished without them. He was helpless without his heart's home, and his destiny was not that of a wanderer. He was bitterly disappointed, of course, but he accepted the truth because it was the truth."

Nayovi placed both trinkets in Martha's hand, and closed it.

"Great desire fulfilled, followed by great truth revealed," Nayovi mused, still holding Martha's hand. "I cannot tell the recipient how to use the spirits of Aturra and Vaennar – it is not, alas, for me to say. These gifts are bestowed upon those who are hungry for discovery, and therefore, the user must search within him or her self. I know that you are hungry for discovery, Martha Jones, anxious for truth, and I know that your search will not take you far. Just remember _both _stories as you inquire with Aturra and Vaennar, and be certain that you are ready for the answer. Simply hold them both close to you, and let your great desire, and your quest for truth consume you."

Martha thanked her, and said goodbye. Outside the door, she stared at the two animals, pink and blue.

Her hands shook.


	4. Chapter 4

IV

As the gears of the TARDIS ground them to their next destination, Martha fingered the trinkets in her jacket pocket.

Nayovi had spoken cryptically, but they'd both known exactly how Martha would use these powers, IF she decided to use them, and where invoking great desire would take her. But could she _really _do that to a friend? Wasn't it a kind of violation, like outer-space-mystic roofies? And ethics aside, wouldn't he see right through it? Wouldn't he feel something foreign come over him, and know immediately what she was doing?

But the spark, the potential?

She had to know.

Almost a year of travelling with the Doctor had yielded ten thousand questions and very few answers. Some of them had to do with the cosmos, and "what's out there," but more of them had to do with the Doctor himself. The same inner monologue took her over and over, the same one from the Pentallian and from the streets of Lewogue before Nayovi woke, and from all the time in-between. _What if he really __**didn't **__know her feelings? What if there was a possibility there? What if there was a tiny bit of potential that she was throwing away by not acting? If he was totally blind, could she help him see? Why not share more with each other? _

In her pocket, she had the answer to the question she most wanted to solve, and the power to _make happen _the thing she most wanted to happen. But what if, after great desire yielded its treasures, great truth gave her a response she couldn't live with? Wouldn't that make things worse for the both of them?

But the life they could have…

She had to know.

Every day for over a month, she walked about with the trinkets in her pocket, and every day, she examined them, thought about Nayovi, weighed the consequences. Then she set them aside until she could begin the entire arduous process again.

She didn't want to have him _this way_. But if not, she may never have him.

What if, in the morning, he got dressed and pretended like nothing had happened? She'd go on living, and she'd have her answer.

But what if he was angry with her for bringing it upon him without his permission? She'd argue that he had a spaceship that probed her brain at every moment of every day – how is that better?

What if he was _so_ angry afterwards that he took her home? She'd finish med school and cure cancer, and eventually forget all about this.

For every fear, there was something to quell it. For every doubt, there was some encouragement.

But no. No way! She couldn't do it – it was sick and twisted and perverted and she'd be furious if anyone did anything like that to her.

She had to know. But no.

"Martha?"

She'd been pacing round her spacious white bedroom room within the TARDIS on a quiet evening, just after saving a starving planet from a despotic ruler who had been intercepting its food shipments for personal use for over five hundred revolutions of their sun (which, apparently, was saying something). The Doctor had been overtaken by the Erkinth Fleet and held captive, and Martha had snuck into their hub and shut off the oxygen supply for their biodome, risking her life and the Doctor's, but knowing that it would drive them outside and away from their sentry posts so that the Doctor could escape. When he found her, she had passed out in a corridor, and for the second time since they'd known each other, he'd breathlessly carried oxygen-deprived Martha out of harm's way. He then sent out the "all clear" signal to the planet's native stomp squad (which she couldn't have done because she didn't have knowledge of the override codes needed to bring them back into the atmosphere), the lack of oxygen giving them the opportunity to come in and re-take their food stores. While sitting in the infirmary, waiting the longest thirty minutes of his life for her to come to, he realised that she'd worked all this out beforehand, and that her mighty brain, once again, had saved them all.

This was thirty-four days after leaving Lewogue.

She was startled as he gently nudged open the door and tentatively stepped inside her room.

"Hi," she said, gripping one trinket in either pocket of her purple velour hoodie. For all thirty-four days, through different adventures and important moments and times in stasis, she'd gone to great lengths not to let him know that she posessed them. It made her nervous anytime he was near her and she had them on her person.

"Mind if I come in?" he asked.

"No," she said.

The TARDIS had made this room for her, the epitome of everything she'd wanted as a child, but never had. It was spacious with mahogany bookshelves lining most of the walls, and all of her favourite things on display. Some of them were things she'd brought, some were things she had acquired in their travels, and some were simply things the TARDIS had placed there over time, as her connection with it grew. The carpet was soft, fluffy white, and a large armchair, large enough for her to sit sideways, lay welcoming in one corner. The bed was wide, and two steps higher than everything else, the head of the four-poster being flush against the wall. The bedspread mimicked Limoges lace, and framed above was an embroidered scene of a field of lavender, the flowers and its stalks leaning into the wind.

He wandered into the room, massaging the back of his neck nervously with one hand. "I need to thank you."

"Oh, Doctor, please," she whined. "We go through this every time."

"I know," he conceded. "But it's important every time. Shutting off that oxygen was a stroke of genius."

"You'd have thought of it sooner," she said, smiling sheepishly at him.

"Well," he said in his trademark _not so fast_ sort of way. "Maybe. Doesn't make it any less brilliant or the day any less saved."

"All right," she sighed. "You're welcome. Thank _you_."

"For?"

"Carrying me out of there," she said. "Being there when I woke."

"It's a pleasure to be there when you wake," he said. Martha smiled weakly, and suddenly the Doctor realised the unintentional innuendo he'd made. "I just mean… when you're in trouble… if you ever need… blimey, I was just trying to be poetic!"

"I know," she whispered. "And you were. I get it. Thanks."

He turned, and kicked his rubber toe against the bottom step leading up to the four-poster bed. His body moved side-to-side, his shoulders were uneasy and Martha sensed that he had something else to say, but he was nervous. She didn't trust herself to ask, so she just waited.

"There's something else you need to know," he confessed finally.

"Yeah?" Her hands clenched in her pockets, the special gifts from Nayovi digging craters into her palms.

He moved toward her again and took her shoulders in his hands. "I've never met anyone like you before." His eyes were serious, soulful.

"Yeah?" she repeated, not knowing what else to say. Her heart sped up and began pounding in her chest. She couldn't imagine that he didn't hear it.

"You're probably the cleverest human being I've ever known," he told her. "I would have died ten times over without you, and so would thousands of others."

She didn't speak, she just felt her heart crawl up her chest and into her throat. She held her breath to keep from… crying? Bursting? Saying something stupid?

"You are _wonderful_, a beautiful person, and I cannot imagine these past months without you."

"Thank you," she choked. She was on the verge of tears now.

"I don't say it enough, Martha," he said, finally breaking eye contact. "In fact, I don't know if I've said it ever. I am, every day, thankful to have you as my friend. In fact, _you are my best friend_."

And he squeezed her shoulders and smiled at her warmly, with a kind of finality.

As though a hundred violins had gone suddenly out-of-tune, the scene crashed in Martha's mind, and everything went wrong.

The sentiment he was expressing to her was a beautiful one, _the_ most beautiful one. She should be beaming back at him, telling him that he's her best friend too, and that her life has been changed for the better because of him. They should be hugging right now. It was a watershed moment for their friendship, but she could not find the mettle to speak, think or even smile absently.

_Friend_. She hated that word. Such a nice word, yet non-committal, ugly to her ears.

She flogged herself mentally. _You did it again, you idiot. That pesky __**hope**__ that keeps hurling you over cliffs._

She looked up into his eyes, incapable of expressing anything but a combination of longing and pain, shock and anger. It was not the reaction that either one of them expected or wanted, but there it was.

"Martha? You okay?"

She realised she'd been holding her breath. She finally exhaled with the words, "Yeah, fine." She managed a pained smile and nodded in ineffective reassurance.

Never before had she been this angry with him, and never before had she loved him quite so much. He had forced her to the boiling point just now, and then had given her nothing, but she couldn't turn it off – she was still boiling. It was the infernal paradox that was this man, this aggravating, wonderful, clueless, brilliant man. The skin of her palm broke in her pocket as she squeezed harder, and she winced, pulling her hand out.

A small trickle of blood oozed from it, and she swore. The Doctor took her hand and examined the tiny wound, and wiped the sticky red liquid away from the cut with his finger. "It's just a scratch," he said, his eyes meeting hers. "What did you do?"

"I'm not sure," she lied. "I guess I might have done it the other day…"

And then as she was talking, he did something wholly unexpected. He brought her palm to his mouth and kissed the little cut, his lips lingering upon her skin for much longer than necessary. His eyes continued to penetrate hers as his tongue reached out and lapped up the next small trickle of blood. Her jaw dropped in shock, even as a frisson of lust slammed through her body.

Uh-oh.

Nayovi had said: _Simply hold them both close to you, and let your great desire, and your quest for truth consume you._

The last month, she had done little other than hold the trinkets close to her, and rarely had she ever been more _consumed_ than in the last few moments…

Seriously. Uh-oh.


	5. Chapter 5

V

"Doctor?" she asked.

"Mm?" he responded, letting her arm down away from his lips, but still holding her hand.

"I need some advice," she said.

"Okay," he said. Normally, he would have taken ten steps backward, sat down and made a great show of _listening intently _and settling in to hear a harrowing story. Today, he didn't. He stayed near her.

"Erm," she said. She almost began with _I have this friend_, but she knew he'd see right through it. Blimey, he was waiting for her to speak, and she had no idea what she was going to say. She hadn't thought this one through!

At last, she said, "Okay, I've been thinking…"

"About what?" he wanted to know. He pulled her in close and hugged her. It wasn't the all-arms, bony, from-the-stomach-up, platonic embrace they normally shared. It was a hug with his whole body. It was different, sweet and warm and envelopping, and oh, so tempting to stay.

But she pushed away from him. She felt odd doing that. It was working against every natural instinct in every corner of her being. Part of her was on fire, the rest was merely tingling. But her brain hurt.

"About lots of stuff, really," she told him uneasily, wringing her hands.

He smiled. "Why are you nervous?" he asked. "It's just me here." He moved toward her again.

"Doctor, can you just listen? I've been thinking about a lot of things. But the thing that's most been on my mind is… well, it's…" she thought fast. "It's a grant that I want."

"A grant?"

"Yes," she said. She riffed. "For medical research. You see, in my… studies, I've had this bee in my bonnet for a while. We'll call it a _theory_. But I haven't been able to prove it yet."

"Wait," he said, his eyes narrowing, furrowing with worry. "Are you thinking about going home?"

"Not actively, no," she said. "But being with Nayovi changed a lot of things, Doctor. Got me thinking about some stuff."

"Okay, so what is your theory? Maybe I can help you."

"Later. Just listen."

He nodded.

She continued. "Just suffice it to say that my theory… it's iffy. If I could prove it, it would change everything for me. For the better! But if I can't prove it, or it turns out I was wrong, then it… well, it might destroy me. I mean, my career. Before it's even begun."

"Ah," he commented, nodding slightly and brushing a stray strand of hair away from her ear. He tilted his head to one side and seemed to look _into _her, searching for a light that he'd never realised existed before. Once again, she felt a chill, but this time she didn't move away from him. She was going to be strong.

"And the, er… _organisation_ offering the grant is an outfit that I really believe in. They do great work all over the place, and…" she looked into the Doctor's brown eyes, watching her, waiting, simmering. She clutched at her chest as her heart threatened to break through her rib cage. "…and oh, my _heart _is with them!"

She looked at him longingly, as usual, but with more pain this time. His hand, still near her ear, curved around to cup her jaw, and the other hand went to her shoulder. He bent down and kissed her other ear. "So what's the problem?" He whispered.

"Well, here are the down-sides," she said, feeling herself losing resolve as his lips slid down to her neck. Before disaster could strike, she stepped away. "One, I'm not sure that this particular organisation can afford to give up this money right now, because it doesn't have all that much money to begin with, and it's got its funds in other research projects. And two, this organisation has been… well, sort of _against_ this type of research that I want to do."

"Don't you have to disclose your intentions in order to get it?"

She gulped. "No, it's a blind grant. That's what makes it so… _tempting_." That last word came out almost as a groan. She looked him up and down, and caught a rush of heat. She loved that suit and the tie and the trainers and the stupid useless glasses he wore. She loved how they fit him, and even how he wore it all as though he had no bloody clue how sexy he was… or maybe it was an air that suggested he _did _know, but had bigger and better things to worry about, which of course just made things worse…

And now, he was relaxed, and as far as she knew, unaware of what she'd done.

"You don't have to say what you're going to do? They'll just give it to you?

"Yes. I don't have to…" she gulped again. "I don't have to go before the board and get shot down. And I know… Doctor, _I KNOW_ that if I could prove my theory, it would not only change everything for me, but for them as well. This theory of mine… it would give them so much, open so many doors for them, if I could prove it's true. Only they can't see it!"

Once again, he took a step forward to touch her. He took her hands. "What if you take their money and you're wrong?"

"That's one of the problems."

"But not the only problem, Martha," he said. Normally, his tone would have been scolding, almost harsh, like a good friend who has caught his friend, who should know better, in a moral tight-spot. But tonight, he was gentle, he spoke softly and almost distractedly, as though he couldn't take his eyes off her collarbone and neck and hairline… "Accepting the grant would be wrong."

His eyes roved over her, and she could feel them.

"Yeah, I know," she said with some effort.

"But what if…" she started again, squeezing his hands. "And this is the part that's _really_ hard. What if someone else stepped in on my behalf and did something…"

"Who could do that?"

"It doesn't matter," she insisted. "People. Someone. But whoever it is has stepped in. And now the blind grant looks like it's coming in my direction… it's like a runaway train and I can't stop it now, and I'm going to use it to try and prove a theory… and they may not like it."

"You could use the grant for something else," he suggested. He kissed her hand and looked up at her with _those_ eyes again. God, he was infuriating!

She opened her mouth to speak in response, but for a moment nothing came out, and her eyes betrayed worry once more. He kissed her hand again, worked his way toward her wrist. He moved her sleeve slightly out of the way and kissed the small area of flesh beneath. When her voice finally did find itself, it was throaty, raspy like a hiss, and she had lost her breath. "There's _no way_ I'm strong enough to do that."

He stopped, stood up straight and looked at her. His gaze was not without compassion, but his words were certain. "You'll have to tell them."

She sighed. She'd been afraid he'd say that. "You mean tell them that my hand has been forced, and that I'm very sorry, but I'm about to take something from them that, if they'd had a choice, if they'd known in advance, they probably wouldn't have wanted to give."

"Yes," he said. "It's the right thing to do."

"All right," she said evenly. "Doctor?"

"Yes?"

"My hand has been forced, and I'm very sorry, but I'm about to take something from you that, if you'd had a choice, if you'd known in advance, you probably wouldn't have wanted to give."


	6. Chapter 6

VI

He looked at her with confusion, his perfect, uneven eyebrows furrowed with concern.

She took the trinkets from her pocket and held them out for his inspection.

He shifted his eyes to her hands, and stared at the little icons. Then he met her eyes again, without having unfurrowed. "Aturra the Hart and Vaennar the Moth. Lewogue mythology. Great desire linked with great truth," he said softly.

She nodded, a tear now sliding down her cheek.

"You invoked great desire because you want truth."

"I'm sorry," she managed to whisper. "It was an accident. Nayovi forgot to mention that it could be… _invoked_ without my knowing."

"That's why I feel like this?"

She nodded.

There was a pensive pause on his part, and then, "Is it your great desire, or mine?" he asked.

The question surprised her. "Mine," she answered.

"I see."

Ashamedly, she turned and walked over to her shelf and found a mahogany box in which to store the infernal trinkets, out of sight. There was a long silence in the room while she moved to hide the icons and the Doctor didn't budge a muscle. She turned to face him and sighed, mostly to avoid sobbing.

The Doctor took a long, deep, noisy breath, then said, "Do you know what we should do?"

_Yes, I've known for quite awhile, that's what got us here, _she wanted to say. But instead, she said, "What?" a little afraid of the answer.

"The Uffizzi."

"The museum? In Florence?"

"Yeah," he smiled. "It's almost as old as I am. Well, half as old, really, at least in your time. But all the same, fancy a look?"

She was confused, not quite yet relieved. "Why?"

"Because you're beautiful, and I want to take you out," he said. "I've discovered something… let's call it _a wellspring previously untapped_. And even if it's temporary, it feels bloody lovely! So, how about it?"

"You're not angry?"

"Life's too short."

She chuckled bitterly. "That doesn't really answer the question. And anyway, you're not in your right mind. You're going to be right pissed off in the morning."

"Pissed off that I took you to a museum?"

"That I let you do anything like that, knowing that you've been… _influenced._"

"Perhaps," he said. "But as I've said, life's too short. For once, I've decided that all I care about is the here and now." He crossed to her, and took her chin in his hands and kissed her.

These words and actions were so unlike him, it frightened her, but, as she had said a few minutes before: this phenomenon had become a runaway train. There was nothing she could do. She had no idea how to reverse the effects of the icons' magic or whatever it was, and she knew she wasn't strong enough to resist the Doctor if he really got going…

As a child, she'd hated when adults told her to be careful what she wished for, but now she saw the logic in that advice, in all its hideous glory.

And with all of the hideousness, all of her shame and fear, she felt torn. She couldn't just switch off her feelings. He wanted her, and part of her was melting, letting go of its will-power, inch by inch.

He took hold of her hand and led her toward the bedroom door. As she stepped out into the TARDIS' golden hallways, she turned out the light, and thought, _well, at least for the moment, he's leading me __**out **__of the bedroom._

"You know, in 1911, Vincenzo Peruggia stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre and tried to sell it to the Uffizi," the Doctor told her as they made their way round the corridors and into the console room.

"So why didn't they buy it?" she asked.

"Because it was stolen and they knew it," he said. "I suppose they couldn't see themselves having that kind of luxury under such morally tetchy circumstances. Even if it _was_ someone else's doing."

Martha shivered, but he seemed to be pretty well unaware of what he'd said. Perhaps she was just being paranoid because she felt guilty.

"S-so, what did they do?" she inquired, watching the Doctor dance round the console.

"Called up the Louvre and ratted the guy out," he said. "As a professional courtesy."

She nervously stood behind the stool as the TARDIS prepared for departure, and the heat from the console made her feel the purple velour hoodie was a bit much. She unpeeled it from her body and draped on the back of the chair, leaving only a fitted black spaghetti-strap top. She slinked around the stool, dressed all in black, and sat down. The Doctor's eyes slid up her body then down again, as she pretended not to notice.

Thirty seconds later, he threw the hand-brake into place, and announced with grandiosity that they had arrived at their destination. They smiled at each other, and went toward the exit hand-in-hand, and opened the door onto a busy, touristy street lined with upscale shops and galleries.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"This is the Ponte Vecchio," he said. "It's the only existed old-style bridge, where there are still storefronts and taverns, existing in the twenty-first century."

"Hm," she mused, looking about. It looked to her like a regular street of old Europe; she couldn't quite grasp the fact that it was a bridge. Normally, she would have exclaimed something and used words like _brilliant_ and _massive_ and _wow_, but today she was too nervous.

"Anyway, the Uffizi is just a stone's throw," he said.

"Lead on."

They crossed the bridge and headed down the riverbank to the Uffizi Palace and entered the upper floor which housed the galleries. Their promenade through the artwork was tense, as Martha could not relax. She continually stole glances at the Doctor, looking for signs that he'd intended to bring her here to throw her in the Arno or worse. He held her hand for a lot of the time, which he had done plenty, but she was self-conscious and sweaty, and cold barely concentrate on the moment. Occasionally, he'd look over and say, "Stop it, will you? Everything's fine."

But she could not convince herself.

When they had finished, the Doctor declared he knew the very thing that might calm her down. "An evening in the Italian countryside," he said. "Give me your phone."

She did, and he walked over behind a plant to get some privacy.

* * *

"It's weird," she said as the Tuscan landscape rolled past. "I've seen so many of those paintings before, and they're so iconic, it never occurred to me that there were _originals _anywhere. I thought they were just… entities. Like Botticelli's Venus. It's actually _there_, here, I mean, in Florence!"

The Doctor just smiled, happy to see that the greenery and rolling hills were beginning to quell her worries a bit. They were in the back of a non-descript white car, perhaps twenty years old or more. It was a Florentine taxi, taking them from the city into the Ruffino wine country. It was only a forty-minute drive, so they had decided to do it the "old-fashioned" way, rather than jump across the space using the TARDIS.

"Greppone Mazzi Estate," the driver said, gesturing carelessly toward the beige building which had come into view. Then he spat a total at them, the Doctor paid him and took a receipt from the sort of portable till the man had, and then they watched the white car disappear over a Tuscan hill.

"Charming bloke," the Doctor said. "Do you suppose we should have invited him on the tour with us?"

They were greeted at the entrance by a small, energetic woman who handed them each a brochure, and reminded them of the price, which they paid, and they stepped inside. Perhaps a dozen people were milling around the front room, fingering the bottles of wine on display, chit-chatting, quietly waiting to be told to queue up.

In a few moments, another woman came into the room, commanding attention. She was holding a tray with a dozen tiny plastic cordial glasses, each with a bit of red wine. It reminded Martha of the altar boys in church.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Greppone Mazzi Estate," she said. "I am Renata, I am co-owner of the vineyard. Please come forward for your first wonderful sampling of our signature wines."

Everyone in the room took a tiny cordial, and waited for her to give them the go-ahead.

"This is our trademark appellation, the Brunello di Montalcino," she said. "Please sip. Let the wine roll into the back of your mouth, behind the teeth, the roof of the mouth, so that all parts of your palate may experience the array of flavours. Pietro will be around with a receptacle, should you wish to discard."

Martha and the Doctor obeyed Renata's advice as a teen-aged boy (presumably Pietro) moved about the room offering to allow guests to spit their wine into a small silver bucket. A few people did so, but as he walked past them, Martha looked up and saw the Doctor swallow, then wave Pietro away, so she did the same.

"What do you think?" he whispered.

"I love it," she said back, smiling up at him. "Thank you for suggesting this."

"You're welcome," he said, and he leaned down, for the second time that day, to kiss her.

"I still say you're not in your right mind," she said.

"Would you relax?"

"I can't."

"Sshh," he said. "Renata is talking."

They repeated the process with what was left in their little glasses, but this time, they listened to Renata tell them what to "look" for, noticing the little nuances of the wine, some perceptible only to certain parts of the tongue or mouth. Once again, they swallowed the wine. And then Renata introduced a tall man, Angelo, who Martha assumed was her brother. He was wearing an expensive grey suit with a burgundy silk tie, and his oily hair was pulled back and was just long enough to touch his shirt collar in the back.

"I am Angelo Greppone," he said. "I am your tour guide. Please come with me."

For the next ninety minutes, Angelo led the group of twelve smoothly through the inner-workings of the winery, and though the Doctor declined perhaps half of the tiny cordial tasters, Martha accepted them all. They sampled the Brunello di Montalcino and the Riserva from vintages as far back as 1975, and discussed banner years, special blends, changes made, and in some cases, tested one vintage against another. It was truly an education for Martha, who had never given much thought to wine before.

She had also never drunk much wine before, and it was all going straight to her head.

"This concludes our tour," Angelo said at last, after answering several questions. "Please proceed back into the lobby, and join us for the fruit and cheese soirée at sunset, out on the western terrace. It begins in twenty minutes, at half-past seven."

The crowed filed past him, with Martha and the Doctor taking up the rear. A somewhat loopy Martha stopped the Doctor by grabbing his lapel, and leaned up to whisper, "Are we staying for that?"

Exaggeratedly, he whispered back, "I suppose so."

She smiled. "Good!" and turned on her heel to follow the rest of the guests out of the room. The Doctor watched her go.

Angelo came up beside him. "She's not used to drinking wine, is she?"

"Nope," said the Doctor.

"It's always obvious. So, how long have you been dating?"

"Oh… well, I guess you could say this is our first date."

Angelo laughed boisterously and slapped the Doctor on the back. "Well done! You do work fast, my friend! She's yours for the taking." And he left the room laughing to himself, while the Doctor watched.


	7. Chapter 7

VII

Martha Jones sat in a wooden glider on the west side of the Greppone Mazzi Estate with geraniums growing thickly on either side out of clay pots. Overhead, the metal bar, stretched across and ivy leaves curled round it. Behind her, people milled about talking, enjoying the country, the sunset and each other. She closed her eyes and sighed, relishing a rush of cool air.

She also rather enjoyed the oscillating effects of the wine.

As the last of the sun slipped behind the hills, thousands of little white lights lit up over and around them like Christmas, and attendants began moving all about the terrace lighting up the fire torches lining the perimeter.

She and the Doctor had been sitting in the glider for an hour, sipping wine, talking. When he'd first joined her, the sun was still out, and he sat down with two glasses of wine. They'd toasted the day, even though it had started out sort of intensely.

"How do you feel now?" he had asked.

"Oh, sort of loopy," she'd said.

He smiled. "We noticed."

"We?"

"Yeah," he said, clinking glasses with her again. "Angelo and I."

"Angelo?"

"Mm," he teased, jutting his chin into the air. "He thinks you're going to sleep with me."

"Does he?"

"Yep," the Doctor said, leaning back, crossing one ankle over the other knee. "But what do _you_ think?"

She didn't much react, except to stare at her shoes. "I don't know."

After a long time, she looked at him, and he was looking back, having never taken his eyes from her. "Well, as I'm sure you know," he sighed. "I'd be very happy if you did."

"I know, but _only_ because I…" she felt flustered. "Put the whammy on you or something. You wouldn't want to otherwise. And me, I want to, but I don't want to if _you_ don't want to."

"I want to," he said. "But I don't want to if you don't want to."

"Doctor, this is so stupid," she said. "Let's just drink wine and have some cheese, and hold hands for a bit, and then we'll go back into town…"

"Okay, okay," he'd said, pulling her head down against his shoulder, and putting his arm around her.

An attendant had come around to refill their glasses a little while later.

And currently, the Doctor was up stretching his legs, having promised to return with a glass of the Riserva for each of them.

When he sat back down, he had two glasses in one hand and a plate of fruit and cheeses in the other. "Here you go," he said, handing her the latter. "Eat something."

"Thanks," she said, taking the plate a popping a couple of grapes into her mouth.

"They said to sip the Riserva after tasting the aged Ricotta," he said.

"Okay," she conceded, breaking a piece of the aged Ricotta in half. She placed one half in his mouth, and one half in her own. They both chewed and swallowed, and then she took one of the glasses from him, and they sipped. It was a lovely taste, buttery and complementary to the cheese.

As they worked their way through another glass of wine and a little plate of fresh foods, Martha became more and more dreamlike, and the Doctor finally asked, "How do you feel now?"

"Pretty far gone, if I'm honest," she confessed. "But it feels good."

"I still have the receipt that Mr. Sunshine gave me when we arrived," the Doctor said. "Shall I call the service and have them send a car now?"

"And go back to Florence?" she said leaning against him.

"Yes," he said. "Where else would we go?"

"Go back to Florence… and then what?"

"Then… we find the TARDIS again."

"Then what?"

"Then… I don't know."

"You don't?" she asked. She tilted her head back and he leaned in, and they fell into a long, languorous kiss. She nearly passed out when she heard him give a quiet little moan as her tongue answered against his, and he pulled her closer, tighter. Her arms curled around his chest, and their mouths clung to each other, grasping and pulling, desperate to stay near and wanting to consume. For her part, Martha was flooded with lust and fire from head to toe, and she had a suspicion that the Doctor was, as well.

When he moved his lips aside and down her neck, something snapped. Martha groaned, "Call that car."

And when an attendant approached them half an hour later to let them know that their cab had arrived, he found them in very much the same state as they had been before making the call. They walked around the building to the front, and crawled into the backseat of a white taxicab.

They began simply holding hands in the cab, trying to have a conversation. But then his fingers found the sensitive flesh on the inside of her arm and her lips found his fingers and his lips found her neck, and then their lips found each other and it was all over. The driver acted like he saw things like this every day, and perhaps he did. But when they came tumbling out of the taxi near Ponte Vecchio, they were giggling with embarrassment that they'd snogged like complete adolescents in the back of a cab.

She reached the TARDIS first, and in her haze, she couldn't think how to open it, so she just pulled the Doctor down for another kiss, and leaned against the wooden door while he fumbled for the key, and unlocked it. They stumbled inside and tried to hold onto each other as they crossed the console room and went down the hall to the nearest bedroom, the white soft haven that was Martha's.

When she reached the first step up to the bed she turned and faced him, and she kicked off her boots. She backed up another step and pulled her tank top over her head, then backed up to the bed and watched him climb two steps, shedding his jacket. She grabbed his tie and fell backwards, pulling him down on top of her. He pushed his tongue forcefully into her mouth and she groaned under the pressure of his body. She began fumbling with his buttons, and in her clouded state, it wasn't easy. Later, she realised that she must have popped off a few of them, and nearly strangled the Doctor trying to get the tie over his head, but somehow, they succeeded in ridding him of his shirt.

Leaning on one arm, still probing her mouth, he slid his hands down her body and took hold of her waistband. He practically ripped the zip open, and pushed his hand past the fabric, behind her knickers. Her head swam and seemed to expand as his fingers found her centre, and his voice hissed her name into her ear. His fingers moved about within her heat as his mouth explored her collarbone and chest, tugging frustratedly at the lace of her bra.

"Doctor," she breathed. "I need you _now_."

He stopped moving and pulled back to look at her. As if he were just realising it, he said, "You're drunk."

"Good," she panted. "That makes us even."


	8. Chapter 8

**Argh! This was so hard! These scenes are getting more and more difficult to write! A whopping thousand words took me over a week!! What is my world coming to? Anyway, I hope you enjoy.**

* * *

VIII

"You're drunk."

"Good. That makes us even," she said.

Perhaps on a different day, in a different room, with a different woman, or at a different time in his life, the Doctor would not have accepted this argument. In fact, he might have even separated himself from Martha for twenty-four hours, or until the feeling passed. Perhaps he would have said, "Now, just a moment – this is wrong. I am influenced by Lewogue magic and you are impaired by alcohol. My feelings are not my own, and your judgment is dull. Let's just slow down and take stock…"

But tonight, here, with Martha, after nine hundred years of doing the right thing, he not only accepted it, but in the haze of stumbling to a standing position long enough to pull her sleek black trousers down over her legs, it seemed to be downright brilliant logic.

He threw the garment over his shoulder, and just hoped he hadn't broken anything important. Then Martha sat up, and she wrenched his fly open while he manoeuvred out of his shoes. She roughly yanked the trousers to his knees, and he bent and brought them the rest of the way. This garment made it as far as the second step down.

And then he descended upon her again, in a quick but dazzling whirlwind of sounds and sensations, they made love furiously, encumbered but uncaring, driven but unrestrained. Release came for her almost immediately, and all further motion drove itself into the centre of her being and reverberated out to her extremities. The entire undertaking was almost without conscious thought, and their exertions were abstract and formless, like a careless splash of paint. His lips, tongue and teeth strove frantically to cover every inch of her neck, and all of his urging brought her forward and forward with no chance of recovery. By the time she was taken with a second wave, he was nearly ready. From the moment when they hit the door until the moment when his voice raggedly tore the air with surprise and ecstasy and the total consumption of an explosion brought on by madness, perhaps four minutes had passed.

When he opened his eyes and looked at her in shock, some rationality returned. But her only thought was ethereal and disbelieving : _this is the Doctor._ A montage of the past year went through her mind. Watching him move round the console, calmly, frenetically, and every point in-between. Watching him run, shout, smile, stew – all of those little moments in which she loved him desperately and wondered…

And this was the same man with her, here, now, breathless, still inside her. She realised that the shock on her own face must be just about equal to his.

Four minutes.

But this was no blitz, no momentary insanity that was extinguished with the initial flame. The magic was strong and thick upon the air, and he was determined to see the Florentine morning with her gasping for breath and flat-out with exhaustion. He pulled away from her and crawled up to the head of the bed and pulled the blankets back, and she followed, sinking into the inviting white softness. He sank down beside her, and in a long, steady intertwining of lips and tongues, they explored each other for real. He felt the smooth sail as her back turned into her bum into her thigh, she let her hands slide over him and marvelled at his shoulders tapering down diagonally to his waist. He ran his fingers over her lips, and she kissed them. She plunged her hands ravenously into his hair, and he moaned. Things they'd always wanted to do and say and touch, tonight was their chance. Tomorrow, who knew?

Who knew, indeed. Tonight was the night to ask all questions, to let the wondering wander, because this was fleeting. She had no idea how long she had, but in all too short a time, this euphoria would leave, and she would have the truth, and there would be no more room for doubt. _So tell me now, and I won't ask again: will you still love me tomorrow?_

But later, when Martha looked back on this night, she marvelled at how she was able to let go of all those pesky hang-ups, even given the influence of alcohol. _They made love. _For real, the whole night, all twisted sheets and blue light and whispers, all hazy and slow and entrenching. And she still remembered it the next day. She did not dwell on the impermanence of the situation, she did not torture herself with questions, did not let these moments pass her by. She _enjoyed_ all of these hours together, _felt_ every caress, was newly fulfilled by each advance of his body, newly spurred on each time she felt a storm gathering within her own. She plunged into each new sensation, experienced the full shiver and voiced it heartily each time it came over her. She really _saw_ his eyes narrow and glaze over in pleasure. She _tasted_ him, and actually _noticed_ his jaw clenching in frustration and listened as his expletive cry tumbled desperately from his lips when she pulled away too early. She was totally aware of the wicked smile she gave him then, and absolutely absorbed as he turned her once again on her back and vented that frustration. There was no distraction, no ripple, no memory, no qualm. There was only heat and love, breathing and heartbeats grown ragged and loud, pleasure arriving in waves, between bouts of pure calm. And each moment could be archived and remembered and imprinted upon the mind of Martha Jones, never to be forgotten.

Whether they would be joined by moments more intense, even faster heartbeats, even more delicious frustrations, or whether they would torment her forever as _her one chance_ remained to be seen. Fortunately, as she lay with the Doctor, entwined and in love, her mind was nowhere near there.

And when the sun came up over the Arno, it seemed, just a few feet away from the humming TARDIS, they finally both fell into slumber, sated and utterly exhausted.

_Will my heart be broken when the night meets the morning sun?_ Apparently not. But there was still afternoon to come, and when it exerted its power, Martha awoke. Alone.


	9. Chapter 9

IX

She never thought she could be _crushed_ by the mere process of waking up. But while most mornings were lonely, this one nearly broke her spirit with its starkness. It wasn't just waking up alone – it was waking up in a void, in a place where something had been, and then departed.

Most mornings, she feels like a ghost moving from room to room, showering, dressing, brushing. Most mornings guide her through her routine in a haze, floating upon nothing, until she finds a cup of coffee and makes her way to the humming console room. Most mornings, a man dashing around the controls, already awake and shouting helps to bring her round, excitedly telling her (or asking) about the next destination. Sometimes he couldn't wait, and he'd find her in the kitchen infusing herself with caffeine, and drag her down the hall and into a new day and a new adventure.

But today was a wholly different experience. It was not morning, it was after two in the afternoon. And she did not feel light and phantom-like, but rather trudged heavily like a Sasquatch, squinting her eyes against an unbelievable headache.

She put on some clothes and tucked her hair behind her ears with a headband. As she went through her routine, she couldn't help it – she wondered at and dreaded the conversation to come. Even worse, she was afraid there wouldn't be any conversation, merely a sweeping under the rug of everything that had transpired. She didn't know if she could stand the man she loved minimising, or never acknowledging, the most exquisite event of her life. It had been gorgeous, perfect, cathartic. A vindication of sorts for her, and in his altered state of mind, for him as well. Such a luxury it was to spend that time together, to feel each other for real, to get lost in each other, in the love and the safety and throw caution to the wind and finally act on lust…

A luxury, yes, and today was the price.

As she sighed hard and tried to think of another reason not to leave this room, something caught her eye. Something dark was pooled like a serpent around the metal leg of her unmade bed. She moved up the two steps toward it, and picked it up. It was a brown and blue striped tie. No other pieces of pin-striped suit nor its debris were apparent. She picked it up and cast her eyes over the bed. It was a complete mess – sheets and comforter hanging unevenly down the sides and lying crookedly across the top. One pillow turned sideways, looking like it had been beaten. The fitted sheet had pulled away from the mattress at one corner and part of it was bunched up unceremoniously like a tissue. Just like in a film, images and words and sounds came flooding back, and she had to shake them away. This did not help her headache.

She rolled the tie up in her hand and left the room, closing the door softly behind her. She followed the smell of coffee – something else that was different about today. She was usually the house coffee-maker. She took the long way round and passed the console room, just to peek inside. Empty, except for a long brown trenchcoat slung over one of the columns.

As she neared the kitchen, the aroma got stronger, and she could hear the rustle of a newspaper. She peeked round the corner and saw the Doctor sitting at the table, running his eyes over the day's events. He was wearing his brown trousers, and from the state of them, probably the same ones she had helped him out of last night. With it, he wore only the shirt, and unkempt at that. His feet were bare and his shoes sat sloppily on the floor beside him with the socks stuffed inside. His wrinkled suit jacket was draped on the other chair.

She intentionally made a sound with her feet as she came into the room. He looked up, his expression impossible to read.

"Hi," he said. "I'd say good morning, but it would seem like a cruel joke now."

"Hello," she responded. "Erm… you left this." She held out her hand and walked toward him, holding the tie out in front of her.

"Oh, thanks," he said, taking it. "I was looking for that. Didn't want to wake you by turning on the lights. Where was it?"

"Wrapped around the leg of the bed."

"Oh," he said, then paused. "How'd it get there?"

She shrugged. "I just remember…" her headache came on with a fiery vengeance as she shook away yet another tirade of images and sensations. She grabbed her head on both sides by the temples and moaned involuntarily.

"Er, yeah. That'll be the wine. How 'bout some coffee?" he asked.

"Yes, thanks," she mumbled, moving toward the pot. As she turned away to get a mug from the cupboard, she allowed herself to feel astonished at how matter-of-fact he was being. He was relaxed, easy. _Oh, thanks, I was looking for that. Didn't want to wake you…_

Bad sign or a good sign? She had no idea.

She reached for the coffee pot. It was still full. "Didn't you have some?"

"Mm, can you see _me _on caffeine?" he asked, closing the paper.

"I imagine you'd be high-strung," she mused sarcastically. "Couldn't have that." They both chuckled.

She poured herself a cup and took a yoghurt from the fridge and a spoon, and came and sat down across from the Doctor. He pushed a tiny paper cup toward her.

"These are for you," he said. "Figured you could use them."

She looked inside. "Thanks," she smiled. "Earth-based?"

"Plain old aspirin," he said.

She took them with a swig of her coffee and made a face as the hotness went down hard.

"That bad?" he asked.

"What, the coffee?"

"The headache."

"Well, yeah."

"Sorry I let you drink so much."

She paused. "Are you?"

Her tone was so pointed, it made him freeze for a few seconds. "Yes, of course."

"Oh," she said almost inaudibly. A wave of white-hot emotion seemed to well up from her feet and sweep over her body like a tide. To distract herself and to keep the tears from breaking, she opened the yoghurt container, plunged her spoon in and ate some. She plucked up the courage, took a deep breath and asked, "Can we at least talk about it?"

"Talk about what? Last night?"

"Yes!" she shreiked, a bit louder than she meant to. What the hell else could he have thought she meant? _Oh, could you please stop treating it like it was just a trip to the cinema? And please don't ask me "what is there to say?" _

"Yes, I think we should," he responded, much to her relief. He shut his newspaper, leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest.

She wanted to tell him how much it had meant to her, how good it had felt, how real, how beautiful and fulfilling it was. She wanted to tell him she was sorry for the Lewogue magic, sorry for putting him in a delicate position and then taking advantage... even though they had been "even," as she had told him the night before. And she knew she'd never be able to say any of it after he was finished telling her whatever it was that he had to say. No matter what he said, she'd be rendered speechless, she knew, so she opened her mouth to say that maybe she should start the conversation.

But he beat her to it.

He stood up and began tucking his shirt back in. "And we will. Talk about it, I mean." He put his tie back on in record time, and sat back down to get into his shoes.

"Er, okay," she said, watching him with fascination as he laced up the white trainers he usually wore.

"But first," he said, standing, climbing into his suit jacket. "There's a bit of business we need to take care of. Come with me."

He took her hand and led her out of the kitchen, but turned down a hall that led _away_ from the console room. Wherever they were going, it was within the TARDIS. For some reason, this gave her an unpleasant chill.


	10. Chapter 10

X

"Doctor?" Martha asked as she struggled to keep up. They were hurrying down the hall to someplace unknown in the depths of the TARDIS.

"Yeah?"

"Doctor, can you please slow down?"

He stopped, and she nearly blew past him in her haste. He stood and looked at her. "I'm sorry. Didn't mean to leave you behind."

She broke eye contact and stared at the floor. She knew that she wasn't doing a very good job of hiding her frustration, and she was all right with that. She put her hands on her hips and gave an exasperated exhale. "So why did you?"

"Well, I suppose because my legs are longer than yours."

"No…" she said. She choked on her words – they barely came out. "I mean today. This morning… afternoon, whatever. When I woke up, you weren't there. Couldn't you at least have had the courtesy to…"

"Martha, I didn't sleep," he said. "I couldn't. I was too… I don't know, agitated. I had to get up."

"It wasn't nice."

"I'm sorry. Next time I'll leave a note."

He took her hand again and began walking, a bit more slowly this time, as Martha ruminated over his words.

Several twists and turns later, they arrived at a door. The Doctor opened it and pulled her inside. The lighting was dim and grey, almost rustic, and it reminded Martha of the rooms in which she spent so much time on Lewogue, nursing Nayovi back to health. The shape of the room was pentagonal, and the walls seemed to be made of stacked flagstone, ornamented with mementos. The room had figurines, icons, stacks of paper and scrolls, hanging symbols, dried flowers, all anchored by shallow shelves lining certain parts of the walls. It was clearly a room meant as a remembrance. Beneath their feet was very much the same flagstone, but a purple and green carpet stretched across the space, covering most of the area. Martha looked about confusedly for a few seconds as the Doctor shut the door behind them. She noticed that the door seemed to disappear, and it felt like they were in one of those locked room mysteries.

"What is this?" she asked.

"In a minute," he said. "First…"

He raised his hands until they were both at the level of her head. He seemed to be demonstrating the width of her face without actually touching her. He paused this way, and his eyes were extremely intense. She even noticed him breathing heavily.

And then he grabbed her and kissed her.

It was like that first time, back in the hospital when he kissed her as a "genetic transfer." His hands burned her cheeks and his lips burned the rest of her. She was so taken aback, so shocked, she couldn't move. She couldn't even kiss back. And when he let go, she was left reeling with a goofy look on her face.

"Please don't tell me that was nothing," she mused.

"It wasn't," he said.

"Good."

"Do you want to know why I left you this morning?"

"Yes."

"Martha, you have to believe me: I didn't want to. I wanted nothing more than to wake up with you, and… I don't know, maybe go again."

"Go again?"

He sighed, but didn't break eye contact. "Yeah."

"Whoa. Could you do that?"

"Eye on the ball, please. Anyway, I was scared."

"Of what?"

"Of my feelings. But not just that." He was poised as if to say something else, but nothing else was forthcoming. And then, in lieu of explanation, he said, "I'll show you."

He removed the sonic from his trouser pocket and pointed it at one of the walls. It opened, he took her hand, and they stepped through. Once again, the door closed behind them.

She knew that the TARDIS was an impossible place, but what she saw here absolutely took her breath away. For a time, she stood transfixed, looking about with her mouth hanging open.

"Martha, Lewogue magic is powerful, as you know," he said. "But it manifests as artificiality, especially those based on desire or fantasy. They are not particularly rooted in time or space. When Lewogue magic comes to be, it just…_ is._"

"Uh-huh," she nodded, still looking around. She looked behind them to see if the door was still there. She saw a flagstone wall, but that was all – she could not see how or if it would open.

"Are you listening?" he asked, watching her eyes dart from place to place.

"Yes," she said, shifting his eyes to his. "Yes."

"Which stories did Nayovi tell you when she gave you the icons?"

Martha closed her eyes and tried to shut out the magnificent and absurd sight around her. "Erm, one was a man who desired to become… a Gladiator, I think. And he got rich and famous…"

"And stayed that way, because when the truth came out, it was his destiny."

"Yeah."

"Okay, and what else?"

"A guy who wanted to travel the cosmos, but the truth was that he was not a man of the universe, so he went home to his family."

"Did Nayovi mention how long it took for the truth to manifest?"

"No," Martha said. "I just assumed that these people got what they wanted…"

"And the next day, they would know what they wanted to know?"

"I suppose."

"I was afraid of that," he said. "Martha, that man, the traveller, Naphil? He travelled for forty-five years before the truth finally manifested and he was called home to his family. By then, they had moved on. His wife had remarried, his children were grown, he didn't recognise his grandchildren."

Her eyebrows went up. "Oh. Wow."

"Yeah," he muttered, now looking about the impossible space himself.

"So what are we doing here?" she asked.

He took a deep breath and sighed. "I have a long history with Lewogue," he said. "I've helped them out a lot, and they've got me through some tough times. Back… a _long_ time ago, I was at a point where I just didn't want to go on. I was licking my wounds and feeling sorry for myself, and clairvoyants of Lewogue were very kind to me. They allowed me to rest and complain and live with them without judgement. While I was there, they were attacked by the Automatons, and I built a sonic device that disabled their mechanisms. As thanks…"

"…they gave you the icons of Vaennar the moth and Aturra the hart."

"Yes. And just like you, I held onto them for a while, sure of what I wanted, but unsure of whether I _should_ have it. One day, I was at the end of my rope again, the universe was such a cruel place… I had tried to save a planet and wound up destroying it. I thought that I wasn't meant to have this life. I mean, I never told you this, Martha, but as a kid, I failed all my exams, _stole_ this TARDIS, and struck out on my own just because I was bored. I've been sort of haphazardly putting out fires all over the unvierse for going on eight hundred years now, and I began to wonder if this was really for me. People still died, things still fell apart – was I making it worse?"

Martha shook her head to discourage that train of thought, but she didn't say anything.

"What I wanted was a normal life. Just to settle down and have what everyone else seems to have," he confessed. "By then, my home planet was gone…" he trailed off.

They both looked at the display before them and sighed. "So the magic gave you _this."_

"Mmm," he said. "Nice, isn't it? My second favourite planet in existence. But away from everyone I know on Earth."

"You were going to live here?"

"Yes," he said. "I did live here for a few weeks."

"What is it?"

"It's Amsterdam," he said. "1780."


	11. Chapter 11

XI

Martha wandered to her left and leaned on the railing, looking out upon the Amstel River. She exhaled heavily through pursed lips, and turned back to the Doctor.

"The entire city of Amsterdam is in the TARDIS?"

"Well, not exactly, and not at first. I lived here, thought I could settle in and become a scientist or something, you know… help Earth's scientific developments along. Without getting too involved, of course."

"Of course."

He pointed to a door to his right. "I lived in that house, there. The magic gave me everything – a laboratory inside, the furniture I wanted, a name and identity, friends, a position in the community… even a wife and son."

"Wow."

" But every day when I looked outside, the TARDIS was still sitting here. Right about where we're standing. As long as that kept happening, that meant that truth had not manifested. If I was meant to be a trouble-shooting Time Lord, then the magic would have taken me out of this altogether and put me back in my old life. But as long as I was living in Amsterdam and the TARDIS was still here, it meant that this was still artificial, that the 'old me' hadn't gone yet, this world wasn't real, hadn't absorbed me."

"I see."

"One day, I couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't take the artificial existence any longer – and frankly, standing still began to drive me mad. I loved my artificial wife and my artificial son, and if it was meant to be, it was meant to be. But if not – and once I finished feeling sorry for myself, I knew it was not – then I had to be myself. And myself is… well…" he pointed to himself.

"I'm glad of that."

"Me too. Now," he said. "But remember how I told you that the magic isn't confined to a particular time or place?"

"Yeah," she said, pretty sure she knew what he would say next.

"Well, that means that it can be manipulated… anchored. But it is only possible to anchor it within a space which itself oscillates in time and space…"

"Which is the TARDIS."

"Exactly. The TARDIS and I found a way to confine my fantasy to one room. So now, instead of the TARDIS existing in my artificial world, the artificial world exists in my TARDIS. I couldn't go off and just travel from where we were because it wasn't real. It had to be confined if I wanted to get my old life back. Someday, when the truth manifests, this world will probably go away. I know what the truth is – I don't need a Lewogue icon to tell me."

"How long has this been here?"

"I'm not sure," he said, thinking. "Not quite a century, but close. Every now and then, I come back and check to see if it's still here."

"But what about your wife and son?"

"They are suspended and confined as well," he said. "They won't even miss me because they're not real either. If I'm not here, then this world just stops. And… well, I've regenerated since then, so I couldn't even go back to them now. They wouldn't recognise me. Or maybe they would – it is a fantasy, after all…"

"Don't you miss them?" she asked. "You said you loved them."

"I do," he said. "But it's part of the fantasy. I only miss them when I'm in it. When I'm _here_. Going about my normal life… I remember them, but that's all."

"Well then, we'd better leave," she said, taking his hand in both of hers. "You feel it now. You feel the loss."

"I do."

He pointed the sonic at the flagstone wall, and it yielded to them. They stepped through the opening, and found themselves back in the pentagonal room, covered with knick-knacks. Then the wall closed up behind them, and it was as if the Amsterdam room never existed.

The Doctor turned, and very pointedly, faced another wall. Martha did the same. They both sighed once again.

"Do you know what's coming?" he asked.

"I think so."

"Living in a fantasy can be a dangerous thing, Martha," he said. "And when I woke up this morning and looked at you, watched you sleep, I loved you. And I suspected that the magic was still working – though I suppose it could have been possible that I love you, and that's the truth."

"But not likely," she said, almost inaudibly, not looking at him.

"Well, I didn't know. And I was not going to let you live in a world that you desired, but that could disappear any day, with no warning."

She nodded, but could not speak. She thought she would have been strong enough for that if it meant the possibility of having a life of love and adventure with the Doctor. But the Doctor was usually right, so she did not argue.

"Amsterdam represents what was once my great desire, so that's what the TARDIS swallowed," he said. "Your great desire?"

He looked at her with an _are you ready for this? _expression, and pointed the sonic at the wall they were currently facing. When it gave way, they stepped through. Martha looked about and saw a seating area strewn with books and maps, mechanical devices in various states of disrepair. A wardrobe stood open beyond, containing what seemed to be an endless supply of suits and shirts and ties, beside a shoe tree adorned with Converse trainers in varying colous. A huge bed loomed, beautifully made, to the left, but pieces of discarded pinstriped suit lay across it, and what looked like the cotton pyjamas he'd worn in hospital when they'd first met.

"Your bedroom," she said.

"Yes," he said. He placed his hand nervously on the back of his neck. "And I have to say… I knew, obviously, that it might be _something_ like this, but I didn't see _this_ coming. The TARDIS took my bedroom and moved it here. Which presents a problem, because, well, it's my bedroom. I sleep here."

"And when you're in here…"

"…I love you."

"You love me." She didn't make eye contact.

"And I want… well, you know what I want…"

"Because I want it too."

"Exactly."

"And outside?"

"You're my best friend."

"And that's all."

"Yes," he conceded.

"What about in that stone room?"

"There's a residual effect in there, because that room is composed of Lewogue magic," he said. "It's like a computer terminal and the two rooms are plugged in. So, I feel it in the stone room, sort of…"

"But in here, you get it at full force?"

"Yes."

"You love me?"

"Yes."

"Right here, right now?"

"Desperately," he said, his brow furrowing with raw emotion.

"I'm sorry, Doctor," she said.

"No need to be," he said. "It's not your fault."

"Will you feel that way once you're outside this room? That it's not my fault, I mean?"

"Yes," he said. "I'm not in love with you out there, but I'm still the same man with the same brain. I know what happened, and you are not to blame."

"Whoa," she said, looking for something to sit on. She spotted an armchair near the door and backed up to it, drifting into a seated position to contemplate this new turn of events.

_There is a room in which the Doctor loves me. One room in the entire universe where he wants me like I want him. And it's his bedroom. He dresses here, does his most private thinking here. He sleeps in that bed, and moves and dreams and who knows what else…_

_He'll try to keep me away from here, and I'll try to keep myself away. But when he lies here, he'll dream of me, he'll wish I could be beside him, or under him or wrapped around him, and I'll wish it too. And I'll know. And he'll know._

_I could sneak in here in the middle of the night, any time I want…_

_Oh, dear._

_This room is dangerous – it's like Pandora's box. It's worse than that…_

Her voice rung out and bounced off the walls in this most sacred of places. It was just a cry, an inarticulate outburst of frustration. "This is… this is… I don't even have word for it! It's like a dream wrapped inside a nightmare! What am I supposed to do with this information, Doctor?" she asked, pleading.

"I don't know," he answered, kneeling on the floor in front of her. "I don't even know what _I'm_ supposed to do with it. I know what I _want _to do with it…" He took her hands and kissed them all over, each individual finger, knuckle, her wrist, her palms.

"I know what I want to do with it, too."

"I never want to leave this room again," he said, working his way up her arm.

"Oh, but you will."


	12. Chapter 12

XII

"I never want to leave this room again," he said.

"Oh, but you will," she replied, pained.

And he did. Because she mustered up the mettle to ask him to stop kissing her arm, he obliged, and the two of them left that infernal bedroom, the Doctor looking at her with resignation as he crossed the threshold out of the room into sanity.

They used a different door to exit than the one they'd used to enter, one situated beneath the small loft in the Doctor's bedroom which held his library of the most oft-used volumes. He explained that if they used this door, they wouldn't have to go through the flagstoned Lewogue magic sanctuary outside, and could walk directly into the TARDIS corridor.

"Shall we go back and finish breakfast?" he asked, letting go of her hand. "Or whatever you call it when it's two in the afternoon?"

"Let's just go for a walk and see what else is out there," she said trying to remain unfettered. "This is my first time in Florence."

"Your wish is my command." He was slightly disoriented, since his bedroom had moved to a completely different part of the ship, but he quickly found his bearings and led Martha to the console room.

They strolled under the Florentine sun for a few hours, entirely ignoring the elephant in the room. Each wanted to ask the other what they were going to do about their dilemma, the potential powder-keg waiting for them back in the TARDIS, but neither did.

The Doctor considered moving to another bedroom, but it would feel to Martha like a hideous rejection, and it didn't seem right. Martha herself thought of suggesting that they _switch_ bedrooms for a while, but she didn't even know how to turn on the lights in the Doctor's room, let alone set the climate control options or find the loo in the middle of the night. Asking him to show her would defeat the purpose of the switch.

He thought of sleeping in shifts. He only needed half the sleep Martha needed anyway, so if he slept for three or four hours in the early evening, she could go out to the shops, and later on, she could come back and go to bed herself, once he was safely out of his room. He knew that this arrangement would get old fast, but it might work for a while. Martha thought of staying in a boarding house or hotel for a while. The Doctor thought of deadlocking the doors to his bedroom and putting them on a timer. Martha thought of asking to bring her sister on board to help keep her grounded.

But none of these solutions really would allow them to continue doing what they did better than anyone else in the universe: jumping and running at a moment's notice, turning on a dime and doing their best to save everyone.

They spent the day doing small things, by their standards, anyway. The Doctor told her about when he'd met Brunelleschi and had helped him design the great dome at the heart of Florence's unique architecture. They visited a few churches, and stood in line to climb to the towers, talking to a few locals and a few non-locals. They watched tour boats pass on the Arno, ate gelato, gave a few euros to a homeless man, helped a five-year-old Austrian child find his mum, and then had dinner in a tiny restaurant off the beaten path. They omitted the wine. After dinner, they found a street fair and stood and watched buskers perform, one after another, odd talent after odd talent.

When they returned to the TARDIS, it was just before midnight. Nothing particularly important had been discussed, and certainly not resolved, so when the time came, they simply said good night and each retired to their separate quarters.

And that's when they fully knew how difficult this was going to be.

Martha lay in the semi-dark, the room illuminated by a glow meant to mimic moonlight, a gift from the TARDIS. She was used to missing him, used to feeling the caress of cold sheets and empty air, trying hard not to imagine his hands on her body, lips on her neck, and trying even more desperately not to let the fantasy get further than that. And truthfully, she was used to failing in that regard. She rather liked this fantasy, and when she couldn't take it anymore, sometimes she let it take her.

But what usually silenced her urges, long enough to get to sleep, anyway, was the thought of him sitting in his bedroom with his sleeves rolled up and his glasses on, nose buried in a book and mind racing far, far away from here and now. Knowing that he was somewhere in the ship utterly unaware that she even existed (for a little while, even) actually brought her back to reality.

Lying in bed and feeling alone had become a way of life for her, but tonight, this way of life had changed. Not only did she now have the very real _memory_ of his hands on her body, lips on her neck and other parts, but now she knew that he was lying in the dark having the same thoughts. His memories ran to her, his desires were the same. Was he now unable to concentrate on his book, unable to let his mind wander away from the here and now? Was he now remembering and imagining _her _hands on _him_, _her _lips, her voice and her sigh?

He was. Across the TARDIS, he sat upon a dark red sofa in his underwear, near the steep staircase that led to his bedroom's loft, leaning forward, attempting to concentrate on the book _Brunelleschi's Dome_. The story, of course, he already knew (and the author wasn't telling it right anyway), but it was fun to read human history anyhow. But none of the words were sticking, none of the events mattered because, blast it, he was in love. And in lust. And nothing else was as important. And who cared that it was artificial or magical or what-have-you? At this moment, it was real. He knew it was real because it was tearing him apart, but he'd not have it any other way. Only love could sting like this, and yet still have him grasping at it, yearning for more.

How could he have even _thought_ of moving to a different bedroom? How could he have thought of bolting the door to keep her out? Just the thought of what something like that would do to Martha made him sick to his stomach. Who was that man who walked around in broad daylight with her, holding her hand, watching her smile? How could that man not catch fire at her very touch? He knew he was one and the same, and yet he refused to believe it. It wasn't fair that that insensitive prat was the only one who got to speak to her now, the only one who could hold her hand and hear her voice and listen to how brilliant she was, how her beautiful mind matched her body. He slammed the book down on the coffee table in frustration and leaned back on the sofa, tugging at his hair.

Definitely love. Keeping him wound tightly, keeping his mind racing and all ten billion of his emotions just below the surface.

But only lust could keep him awake this way. He had already tried to go to sleep, but the moment he closed his eyes, she was all he could see. He hadn't tried very hard, mind you, before he'd stood up and gone for the bookshelf. But even the written word had proved to be no friend to him, and so he returned to bed to try again. Once again, the backs of his eyelids became her face. The silken sheets between his fingers and covering his body became her brown skin, smooth and warm, roving over him. The dim lights in the room became her eyes, the silence became her whispering. Soon enough, his hands became her lips and his movements, his rhythm became her rhythm, and the drive within his body was out of his own control…

And in the end, a calm washed over him. That unique calm that only such a release can bring. It's like the eye of the storm, the eerie silence that follows a violent event which ravages, unheeding. Is that how he now thought of Martha? A violence that had taken residence within his body, and had staked claim and damaged him? Perhaps. If just the memory of her, of her touch, could slam through him this way, then yes, maybe her presence in his mind was a kind of violent event.

Because the eerie calm after the storm always brings a false sense of security, followed by an emptiness and dread. _I feel satisfied, but for how long? When is the next wave? When will I be taken again?_

_I have to see her. _

_But if I leave this room, I won't care anymore._

_I want her to bring the storm with her. When it comes back, I want to control it this time – I want us to ride it out together, not just be victims of its rage._

_But if I leave this room…_

And in that other dimly lit room, another tidal wave was ebbing away gradually. Martha felt the unique calm, followed by the eerie silence. The storm was _conspicuously_ absent now, it had had its way with her, shattered her, and then gone.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she did wonder when it would be back. But then, she'd been wondering that for a long time.

And then something sliced through the room, a sound that, in her faraway state, sounded absolutely alien to her.

Phone.

"Blimey," she moaned, trying to uncloud her mind and regain control of her leg muscles. "What the hell, mum? Middle of the night in Venice is more or less the middle of the night in London, you know?"

She dug the phone out of her jacket pocket, which had been thrown into the armchair. "Hello?"

"Hi."

It wasn't mum.

"Oh. Hi."

"Couldn't sleep."

"Me neither."

There was a long pause, and a heavy sigh on the Doctor's end.

Then he asked, his voice heavy with emotion, "Martha, is this how you feel _all the time_?"

"Pretty much."

"How do you cope?"

She chuckled bitterly. "Magic."


	13. Chapter 13

XIII

"Magic," he repeated.

"Well, really, desperation," she said. "Same thing."

"What?" he asked, his voice high, sceptical.

"I love you, and out of desperation, I employ magic," she said flatly. "That, apparently, is how I cope. Hooray for me. Did I mention? I'm nominated this year for the galaxy's Biggest Emotional Cripple."

"Stop it. Martha, it was an accident, and I understand that," he said. "I understood it before, and I understand it better now."

"How do you mean?" she asked, settling into the armchair. She had an idea that this might turn into something of a lengthy chat.

"Just that... that desperation, I understand it now. After tonight."

"You can't tell me this is the first time you've felt this way."

"I've been in love before, yes," he conceded. "But I've never felt this... separation. The unattainable quality of it. Reaching out for something that's not there."

"You've never wanted someone you can't have."

The Doctor was taken aback, and his eyebrows went up. His voice, however, dropped. "Someone I can't have. Is that what you are?"

A pause. "No, it's not. Truthfully, Doctor, you could _have me_ anytime you felt inclined."

"Well, I feel inclined. I feel very, very inclined," he said, with finality. Then, he added, "Actually, I've felt inclined, gone over the edge and come back again. But I have a feeling that if I asked you to come to my room, you wouldn't do it."

Another pause, this time longer. "Are you asking?"

"I just said _if_."

"You didn't answer my question."

"You didn't answer mine either."

"You didn't ask one."

"Martha."

"Fair enough," she sighed. "You might be right – I don't know if I would come if you asked right now."

"Mm. So then you _are_ someone I can't have."

"Doctor, I'm only staying away because it's a really bad idea for us to... do what we would inevitably wind up doing. We both know this is temporary..."

"We _don't _know that," he protested. "The truth is still out there. Besides, who says we'd wind up... doing that thing? You could come and be with me, and just... be with me, and still say no to that other thing. It's not inevitable."

She smiled in the dim. "Aw, I appreciate that, but yes it is," she said softly. "Inevitable, I mean. Because that's what I meant when I said you could have me anytime you felt inclined. If you're there, standing in front of me, kissing me, whispering to me, wanting me..." in lieu of finishing the sentence, she let out a little groan.

The groan inflamed him slightly, but he asked her to finish. "What does that mean?"

"It means I don't have the strength to say no to you," she said, her eyes shut tightly. "I've loved you for too long, too hard. I couldn't do it."

"Too long and too hard?"

"Yes. Like... stinging nettles in the Kalahari, and I'm barefoot."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Martha," he sighed.

"Well, the past is the past, as you well know. But now, I want you, you want me, so I'm staying right here."

He laughed. "That's the most ridiculous logic I've ever heard!"

She couldn't help but laugh herself. "I know."

"Well then, let's re-think," he suggested.

"Are you asking me to come?"

There was a bit of silence, some fidgeting, but no answer.

Martha exhaled heavily, and threw her head back against the armchair cushion. "Talk to me some more."

"About what?"

"I don't know. Whatever is on your mind."

"What's on my mind is you. Last night."

"Mmm," she sighed, moving her body sideways and curling up tightly in the chair. She let her head fall against the softness. "It's on my mind too." Her tone was one of resignation, bordering on exasperation.

"What was on your mind _then_?"

She chuckled uneasily. "What, you mean when we were..."

"Yes," he urged gently.

"Just... the moment. How good I felt, how good _you _felt. How I finally, _finally_ knew what I'd been missing, and knowing that you're entirely worth the pain."

"The pain," he echoed.

"Yes, the pain, Doctor. And frankly, my mind was going back to all those times when..." she hesitated. "...when there was pain, and I felt cautiously vindicated. You were all mine, even if it was only for a little while."

"All those times?" he asked, worry coming through in his voice. "Do you mean times when I hurt you?"

"Teased me, rejected me, lied to me, made me feel inadequate, unattractive, unintelligent and unwanted. Yes, all those times."

She could hear a breath and a miniscule croak, and she knew he'd opened his mouth to speak, and that's all that had come out.

"Martha, I had no idea I'd done any of that!"

"But that's just the point," she said. "You had no idea. Do you know what's worse than contempt, Doctor?"

"Indifference."

"Exactly. You never did it on purpose, it just happened because you weren't taking care not to let it happen. At least if you had told me I was stupid or ugly, I'd have felt like you were paying attention, expending _some _energy thinking about me."

There was a pause while he gathered his thoughts. "You were so strong," he said finally, almost explosively. "_Are_ so strong, I mean. I'd been used to travelling with someone who needed me all the time, to tell her she was brilliant and brave and trustworthy, or she would pout and lock herself away for half a day. Martha, you were a novelty! I was so glad to have someone I could count on to fend for herself."

"I didn't want to fend for myself, Doctor," she said. "I wanted _you._ I wanted to be yours, at the centre of your world, with the chases and the rescues and escapes and worries and kisses and clinging... all of it! And _everyone_ knew it, except for you."

"Everyone? Who is everyone?"

"Shakespeare. Those people on New Earth. Talullah the showgirl. My entire family. Riley Vashtee. And do I need to mention Nayovi?"

"She doesn't count – she's a clairvoyant."

"But the rest of them aren't. All they had to do was stop for five seconds and look at me, which you never, _ever_ did."

He swallowed hard. "Okay, hit me."

"Pardon?"

"Hit me. I can take it. Tell me about all those times."

"You want me to drag all that out now?"

"I need to know so that... I can fix it, or improve, or do penance... something. Please. Tell me."

She took a brief moment to ponder, but ultimately, she needed little prodding.

"All right, let's start with our first night together," she said. "You told me you'd take me on one trip and one trip only, as a thank-you, then it was back home with me because you'd rather be on your own. So what was I, a hitcher? A civilian on a ride-along? And not even _because I was clever_ or _because you fancied me_ or _because you thought I might enjoy it_. It was just to thank me for not letting you die on the floor."

"Fair enough."

"And when I brought up the kiss – do you even _remember_ kissing me in the hospital?"

"Oh, yes. Very well."

"When I brought it up, you made it painfully clear that you'd intended it as a genetic transfer." She began to feel her voice catch in her throat. She took a moment to get her breath, but her voice came out wavering. "Doctor, do you understand what that was like? You had grabbed me, pulled me close, kissed me with what felt like some _real_ emotion, then you ran away from me, and later claimed that the only reason you'd done it was to fool the Judoon. That was an important moment for me, Doctor, and you shattered it.

"And then , God help me, I tried to flirt with you! I teased you about your tight suit, and how you'd flown across the universe to ask me on a date... any idiot could have seen me being coquettish and coy, and any sane man would have responded with at least a wink or some acknowledgement that he was aware of what I was doing. But not you! I told you I wasn't interested, lying through my teeth of course, and you said _good_. And that was that. No discussion, no argument, no hint of disappointment. Just... good. Relief that you wouldn't have to deal with me."

"That's not how I felt," he said softly.

"Doesn't matter. It's how it came off. You want to know about this stuff, don't you?"

"Yes. Yes, I do."

"All right. Let's talk about when we were at the inn in Shakespeare's time. Lying in that bed together... oh, God!" she shrieked. Tears were coming now, a nice steady little trickle.

"What?"

"I hate this story, Doctor! I hate it so much."

"Tell me."

"I made an innuendo, and you swatted it away. Fine. So we lay down and faced each other, and I remember..." she swallowed hard again, trying to gain control. "I remember really looking into your eyes for the first time, thinking about how much they'd seen, how deep they must go. I thought they were the window to your soul, and I thought they were searching me as well. And then do you know what you said? You said that Rose would know what to do, exactly what to say to make things better, but oh well, you'll take me home in the morning."

"I said that?"

"Yes. You said that. And it's the first inkling I had that I was never going to be worthy to you _because I wasn't her._"

"That's not true."

"Again, irrelevant," she shot back. She sniffed, reminding him once again that she was broken. "The Face of Boe said you weren't alone, but you smirked at me and completely shot me down when I suggested that he might mean that you've got a friend in me. Then you tried to take me home with absolutely no ceremony or circumstance – shall I go on?"

She stopped and took a deep breath. She hadn't realised how much of her air she'd been using until she found herself panting a bit.

"Blimey," he said. His voice was low, stern, a growl.

"But I've come to understand that it's my own fault."

"What?"

"Oh sure, that first night, that was all you. But I should have realised after that where this path would lead me, that is to say nowhere. Or more accurately, into disaster," she said. She stood up in her silent white bedroom, and let out a sob that she'd been keeping in, perhaps for months. "I didn't learn!" she practically yelled through her tears, her whole body clenching with pent-up frustration. "I just kept chasing after you and chasing after you and kept getting my heart stomped-on. Not even! Left out, ignored, forgotten. Stomped-on would have been better!"

"Martha... oh God..."

She couldn't stop now. "But damn it!" she sobbed. "You! You wouldn't let me go! You wouldn't let me get over you so there I was. You just had to be all charming and show me the stars and adventure and good deeds and drama, and I couldn't let go! And I suffered through it. I suffered through the life-or-death and the hot-and-cold because... I had to. Because I love you _so much_, I couldn't bear to leave. Can't bear it, I mean. I can't be away from you, so I just... I just..."

Once again she slumped down in her armchair. She leaned back against that same soft cushion and closed her eyes. She was all cried out for the moment. Sort of spent.

"Martha? Are you still there?"

"I'm here. I'm just... so _tired_, Doctor. I'm tired of feeling like this. It's new to you, but I'm an old hand."

A long silence ensued, and Martha heard rustling. She had an idea that he was running his hands over his face as he sometimes did when he felt completely buggered, at a loss for what to say or do next. When words did come, they were in the form of heavy whispers. She suspected he was holding his voice back to keep from revealing his own emotion. "Martha," he breathed. "Why do you love me? How can you?"

"Because you're brilliant," she answered simply, shrugging. "And brave and handsome and dynamic."

"Wow."

"More than that," she continued. "More than brilliant and brave and handsome and dynamic. You're the cleverest man in the universe, and you stare down death every single day for the greater good, and you're so sexy you make my knees weak, and you have ten thousand different facets to your personality, not one of them boring."

Again, he wasn't sure what to say. He went with, "I'm also a decent swimmer."

This made her smile. "I'll just have to take your word on that one."

"Well then while we're on the subject, Martha Jones, I think you're the cleverest human being I've ever known. You've only got one life, and you lay it down right beside mine because you always fight for what's right. You are spectacularly beautiful, and the way you move makes my blood boil. And you have shown resourcefulness and mettle, and a range of emotion that I... oh, I ignored it for so long. I think you're amazing."

His kind words brought back her tears. "You're amazing, too. Thank you."

"If you think I'm amazing and I think you're amazing, and you think I'm brilliant and I think you're brilliant... do you see where I 'm going?"

"I think."

"Well, then."

"Are you asking me to come?"

"Yes."


	14. Chapter 14

XIV

There it was: the invitation.

She could cross the threshold in good conscience, having been asked to join him.

But...

Yes, but.

Martha was silent for so long, that the Doctor asked, "Why won't you?"

"I want to. Do you have a room somewhere in the TARDIS where you love me _and_ I'm able to let go of all my hang-ups?"

"I'm not sure – I'll check the database. As soon as I create it. Tell me your hang-ups."

"You know what they are, Doctor. You're under the influence of magic. I can't be with you if it's not real – it's not fair to either one of us."

"Right. But as you said last night, at least we're even."

"We weren't even. I mean, yeah, as far as one of us taking advantage of the other, we were... one of us was just as much out of their mind as the other. But as far as considerations go, the consequences of what we did, of what we could do again... there's _no_ evenness."

"Because it's a long-term consequence for you and a short-term one for me."

"For you, it's going to wind up being one rather ill-advised shag with a friend..."

"...for you, it will represent uncertainty and be a reminder of pain."

"Yes. And the whole thing will feel like a farce..."

"...and there will be a conspicuous emptiness, like a loss."

Martha smiled. "Did Lewogue magic also make you emotionally savvy? Because before tonight you seemed to be clueless."

"It gave me love, which gave me insight."

"It's about time."

"I guess it doesn't take a genius – I'm just now opening my eyes, Martha. I'm just trying to put myself in your position."

"Well, I'll take whatever I can get, as far as that goes. Bravo, Doctor."

"Thank you, Miss Jones," he said. And then a big sigh, and, "So is the answer still no?"

"Yes, I'm sorry. Nothing's changed, Doctor. Just because you now have _insight_ doesn't mean you aren't still under the influence of something artificial. And it could disappear tomorrow. If I came to you tonight, and we..." a frisson came over her, but she forcced herself to say the words, because her forceful decisions called for facing the situation head-on. "If I came, and we made love again, it would just be more emotion, more memories, more_ stuff_ that I'd have to deal with all on my own if and when your feelings disappear completely. Having just a little bit of you is worse than having nothing of you."

"I thought you said it was worth the pain."

"Maybe once. Once, and it's just a beautiful memory, a reward for the pain, maybe. Twice and it becomes an addiction. It becomes something that I inflict upon myself because it feels good, even though I know it might destroy me. Twice, and it begins to create more pain."

"What if it's just comfort?"

"How do you mean?"

"You're in pain, Martha. You've been in pain for a long time."

Reluctantly, she admitted, "Yes."

" At the very least, I'm your friend. What are friends for?"

"You can comfort me later."

Some rustling began to happen in the background, and the timbre of his voice changed. "What are you doing?" she asked.

"I'm putting clothes on. I promise to keep them on."

She laughed. "Doctor," she said, her voice downturning at the last syllable, then she chuckled some more. "Wait, you're putting on a suit in the middle of the night? Do you just want to prove a point?"

"Not a suit, just pyjamas. Cotton. Nothing sexy, I promise."

She laughed again. "Nothing sexy? Please. You couldn't be unsexy if you tried."

"That's not helping."

"Sorry."

"We'll sleep together... just _sleep_. All touching remains above the waist. And I _promise_ I will be there when you wake up, even if you sleep until next Wednesday."

"Doctor, you're making this harder than it should be."

"No, I'm not. I'm trying to make it simple. Sex is complicated. Just holding each other is not."

"Well, you're wrong about that. But either way, it's still not _real_, Doctor. Still magic, still totally artificial. We've discussed why this is not fair."

"No problem," he said. "I have the solution to that, too."

"You do?" she asked, a little bit stunned.

"Yes."

"Well, why didn't you say so in the first place?"

"I didn't know until just now."

"What's your solution?" she wondered.

And then she heard the knock at her bedroom door.


	15. Chapter 15

XV

Martha opened her bedroom door, and there he stood in a t-shirt and the pyjamas he'd been wearing when they first met. It was interesting how different he looked dressed this way. Not diminished, just different. She thought that perhaps the suit he always wore was a uniform, and he wore it when he was "on," with a few exceptions. Not counting the hospital, she had seen him out of his suit only twice, and both times, he'd definitely had his guard down.

"Hello," the Doctor said. His tone was whimsical – another guise. He shut his phone.

Martha did likewise. She decided to voice the thought she'd had. "I see you're not exactly dressed for adventure."

"Nope," he replied. "Quite the contrary. No adventure. Unless you want one."

She stuck one hip out to the side and rested her hand on it. Her face betrayed exasperation. "Doctor."

"I mean it. I'm here," he said, holding his palms out, illustrating his point.

"I see that."

"I mean I'm _here_," he said, emphasising that last word. "So you know that whatever I say or do is real. And I will do anything you want me to. Comfort, entertainment, sex, a cheese sandwich – name it."

She didn't answer for a long while, she just retorted with a steely gaze. Hard, but not unkind.

"Or, alternatively, I could leave you alone, if that's what you want," he said. "It's your choice."

She smiled, at last, to challenge him. "What if I want all of those things?"

His eyes averted in a way that suggested he was trying to work out the logistics of that. "There's at least _one _thing on that list which might prove difficult to do while leaving you alone," he said. "But I could try. I suppose our environment _is_ temporally unstable – there might be potential there..."

Her smile remained. "Why don't we just start with _come in._" She moved to the side and let the Doctor pass, and she shut the door behind him. She walked up the two steps and crawled back into bed where she had been when the phone rang, and she peeled back the other side of the covers and gestured to it with her eyes. He nodded and walked up the stairs and joined her in bed, and she sidled up close, and just lay against his shoulder. He put his arms around her, comfortable just to know what she wanted.

"You'll do anything I want?" she asked.

"Mmm," he said, kissing the top of her head. "Absolutely."

"And you're in your right mind?"

"Totally," he said.

"Promise?"

"That phenomenon is isolated to my bedroom, and nowhere else, Martha."

"Okay. What if I wanted you to make the sun come up?"

"I could do that."

"What if I wanted you to make it rain?"

"I could do that, too."

"What if I wanted you to make it not hurt?"

"I could do it, but you wouldn't like it."

"Hm," she said. "I believe you."

She was silent for a long time after that, then she asked, "What if I wanted you to tell me you love me?"

He was taken aback. She didn't see his face, but she knew that his eyebrows had shot up, and his mouth was making an "o" shape. She could feel both hearts beating faster beneath her palm, and he was holding his breath, probably unwittingly.

After exhaling hard, he said, "Again, I could do it. And I will if you want. But I thought you wanted it all to be real."

"I do."

There was a pause. "Then... I'm very confused."

She raised her head and looked at him. "Relax. I'm not asking you to do that."

"I'm glad."

"What I want you to do is _be real, _just like you said. I don't want you doing anything that _you_ don't want to do. You, the Doctor that I know and love, not the lovelorn bedroom guy, not the guy who's just doing what I tell him. I want _you_. Just be real."

He smiled. "You're brilliant, you know that?"

She smiled back. "And you."

He shifted positions and began to move onto his side, facing her. She tried to adjust with him, but until they settled down, the whole business was awkward.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Being real," he said, and he pressed his lips to hers, rolling just a bit so as to be on top of – but still to the side of – her. She didn't argue, of course, and she felt her qualms give way. The Doctor was under no enchantment, if the rules of this magic were operating as she understood them, and he seemed to want to kiss her. He'd kissed her before when not under enchantment (though it had been a ruse), so she let herself enjoy it. Oddly, even as his tongue pushed gently into her mouth, she felt only comfort from this moment, no arousal. It was an entirely different kiss than the one that began their downward spiral last night at the winery. That had been the result of combustion. This was soulful, more complete. And as the Doctor pulled her closer and held her tighter, she didn't feel any arousal on his part either. Was it possible that this was just a way to "seal off" their phone conversation, to bring closure to a difficult situation that had arisen between friends? She reckoned it might just be.

They continued this way for a while, kissing as chastely as two people can while they're lying in bed together, and when they pulled apart, they simply smiled at one another, and eventually drifted into sleep. They were entwined, and both felt solace.

* * *

The Doctor made good on his promise to be there when she woke. And then they decided they'd seen enough of Florence, and they moved on.

They went in search of Wodnurek, a kind of fermented berry juice from the planet Fmedd. Basically, it was wine, but the Doctor insisted that when consumed on its native planet, no intoxication should befall her, or anyone else who lived by breathing oxygen. They bartered for a bottle or two, and then wound up attending a banquet in honour of a Wodnurek salesman who had sold more units than anyone in the galaxy. They had their drinks on lawn chairs in a meadow outside the TARDIS after the banquet, and then they went inside for the night. The Doctor moved the ship to a more isolated part of the planet, and both parties retired to their rooms.

She had wondered what this evening would bring, and stared at her mobile phone lying on the arm of her big chair. Sure enough, it took him less time than the night before to ring her up.

"Hello?" she said.

"Hi. I miss you."

"It's been twenty-five minutes since you've seen me!"

"Yeah, well, man in love, what are you going to do?"

"Doctor, this is silly."

"I know."

"Go take a sleeping pill and get some rest!"

"Drugs are your answer?"

"Well, you'll have to do something so you can get used to going to sleep on your own. At least until the _thing_ wears off."

"I don't want to get used to it."

"You have to."

He sighed. "You're right. I'm going to have to take the bull by the horns."

"Exactly."

"I'm going to have to be strong. You've lived this way for months – I can do it too."

"Good."

"It's a new leaf for me, Martha. I'm learning to fend for myself, to deal with the loneliness."

"That's very wise."

"Okay then... I guess I'll have to say good night, and be okay with not hearing your voice for another eight hours."

"Oh shut up. Who are you kidding? Just get in here."


	16. Chapter 16

XVI

There are a few things which remain stable for a while, the universe having decided that it's good and useful as-is. _Terra firma, _wind, fire and water. Some things continue to spin for time immemorial, going on exactly as we know them, never improving nor deteriorating. These situations are lucky, happy accidents, and sometimes, we beings of sentience are astute enough to realise this.

But ninety-nine per cent (give or take) of all things in the universe are inclined toward entropy. Things unravel. Stars burn out, species go extinct, rock erodes, rivers meander.

Magic spirals out of control.

Arrangements between friends re-arrange themselves.

The third night after Martha had accidentally invoked the power of Aturra the Hart and brought about her greatest desire, she had said to her temporarily lovelorn Doctor, "Who are you kidding? Just get in here." The Doctor joined her in her bed, as he had the night before, having left his own bedroom, guaranteeing that he was thinking clearly and not through the fog of enchantment. And just like the night before, the two of them sealed their day with a kiss. Several, in fact. Several long, languorous, soul-searching, kisses. And then they fell asleep in each others' arms, comforted and surprised at a new kind of intimacy.

On the fourth night, they didn't even bother with the phone call. Martha had simply taken his hand with a smile and led him into her own room, and he hadn't argued. They both knew that eventually, he'd wind up ringing, so they decided to save themselves some time. The same could be said for the fifth, sixth and seventh nights, and every night for the ensuing weeks. Once this began to happen, the Doctor brought a cache of suits, shirts, ties and trainers to keep in Martha's room, and also a few of his own books, to pass the time before she awoke in the morning.

And at some point in that stretch of time, something began to unravel.

The Doctor and Martha had more or less lived together for the better part of eight months. They ran together, risked their lives together, saved each other. Occasionally they bickered, stopped speaking, avoided one another, and then made up again. They had seen each other at their best and worst, and on one occasion, they had made love. One of them was helplessly in love with the other, and now they were spending not just their waking, but their sleeping hours together.

How long can two friends such as these continue an arrangement whereby they retire to the same bed each night, spend half an hour entwining their legs and arms and lips and tongues, and never feel the pull to let it go further? Two friends who shared everything and who had a precedent for experiencing passion together – really, how long could they go on this way?

The answer was: not very bloody long.

Where on the second and third nights their kissing felt cathartic and healing, beginning on the fourth night, it began to feel the opposite. Rather than providing catharsis, their interaction began to build a demand for catharsis.

Martha noticed the change straight away. Tension began to mount within her as soon as the Doctor's body sank into hers and she felt that old warmth. Comfort, yes, but also a fire. She supposed that her need for reassurance and solace had passed, and the lust was coming back. She contemplated as they continued to engage one another, and she decided that the best thing for both of them was to stop him right now, before the ache became unbearable.

But then he shifted, and she could feel without a doubt that something similar was happening to him. Involuntarily, she gasped and he stopped to look at her. He knew why she'd gasped, he just hadn't expected it.

"All right?" he asked.

She nodded, wondering how wrong it was.

As it happened, they both went to sleep frustrated, but ever so sensible. And also aware that they might be in big trouble.

And not the next night, but sometime in the next couple of weeks, the level of frustration began to vary, and was inversely proportional to the level of sensibility. Sometimes there was catharsis, sometimes not. Sometimes for both, sometimes just one. Occasionally it arrived on its own, but more often, it was brought by the hand of one or the other.

Their already bizarre brand of chastity was growing more and more bizarre and adolescent each night. And the question arose again: how long can two people continue to sleep all tangled, bear their souls to one another and have _catharses_ together before they snap?

* * *

One day, almost a month on, the TARDIS had been pulled into the atmosphere of a planet which had, at its core, a monstrous entity calling itself Jorula, who had a mighty grudge against the Doctor from a debacle over four hundred years earlier. Jorula kept the Doctor and Martha running on what they began to think of as _the treadmill of doom _for over an hour, telling them that their exertions were the only thing powering the dampener of a nuclear device that would swallow the Milky Way.

"Martha, rest," he insisted periodically. "I've got a binary vascular system, you don't! Just let me run for a while."

"No way," she protested. "This is too much even for you!"

Jorula responded to this by taunting their _caring_ relationship, and reinforcing that yes, this was too much even for a Time Lord (bwahaha).

While running, the Doctor worked out, based on the mechanism they were running on, and Jorula's history, that there was no way that _this _device could be a nuclear dampener, and that there was also no way that Jorula could have access to that kind of power. In fact, the treadmill was fueling the dampener of some laser devices acting as invisble bars, keeping Jorula imprisoned at the planet's core. Martha asked if he was sure, and he said no, but told her to stop running anyway. She was reluctant, but she said she trusted him. They stopped at the same time and closed their eyes, but alas, the Milky Way remained, as did Jorula's incarceration. Jorula was mightily pissed off, but such is life when you mess with the Doctor.

When they trudged back into the TARDIS, they were absolutely spent. The Doctor had some work to do on the TARDIS' homing mechanism since it had been damaged while it was being pulled into Jorula's domain. Martha was longing to collapse, and he told her to go – he'd see her later, after a nice long nap. She refused, insisting that they – she and the Doctor and the TARDIS – were a team.

"Would _she_ take a nap if I were wounded?" she asked.

The Doctor smiled and hugged her, and before he knew what he'd done, he'd kissed her spontaneously. He supposed it wasn't entirely undue considering what they'd been through over the past month, all of it harrowing, none of it unpleasant.

So Martha held the torch, steadied screws, put her arm in places where the Doctor's wouldn't go. The Doctor sonicked this and adjusted that, talked to the TARDIS a bit, and in two hours, she was fixed.

Martha stood beside the console and put her hands on her hips, looking up into the Time Rotor, and said, "There now. Doesn't that feel better?" She patted the edge of the console and smiled. Then she kissed the Doctor's cheek and squeezed his hand sweetly and quickly, before leaving to get some sleep.

He watched her go, and something changed.

Martha was in fine physical shape – nothing wrong there. But she did not have a Time Lord's stamina, and yet, she had never faltered on the treadmill, never allowed him to carry that burden on his own. And afterwards, she must have been three times as exhausted as he, but she had refused to rest until the TARDIS was sorted out. And then, she'd communed with it, tried to comfort the vessel, and did so in an off-handed, quite sincere way. That said volumes, in fact, he began to realise, everything she did said volumes, and it was as though that last little squeeze of his hand had switched on a light within the Doctor's mind.


	17. Chapter 17

XVII

When the phone rang, Martha glanced groggily at the clock. She'd been asleep for three hours. She swore, and then leaned out of bed toward the ringing phone. She found it inside the pocket of a tangled pair of trousers she'd peeled off unceremoniously as she'd gone down for her nap. Something about this scenario felt vaguely familiar, but she hadn't experienced it for quite some time.

"Hello?" she groaned. She was sitting in bed leaning forward with her head in her hands.

"Hi, there."

She tried to shake off the syrupy haze of sleep still plaguing her, and sat up. "Doctor."

"That's me. Been sleeping well?"

She chuckled. "Well, yeah. Until now."

"Sorry 'bout that."

"It's okay. I'm sorry I swore at the phone before I answered it."

"Why would you do that?"

"I thought it must be my mum calling."

"Ah," he said. "No such luck, I'm afraid."

"Nah, talking to you is much nicer."

"I need you to know something. Well, two things. Well, three things."

"Yeah?" she asked, yawning.

"Yeah. First of all, I love you."

She sighed. "I knew you were going to say that."

"I'm serious. I love you, Martha Jones. I'm phoning you because I can't get my mind off you. I'm here, and you're there, and I can't stand it. I feel like I _need_ to be touching you. Now. Always." It was like a declaration. She could picture him standing, feet apart, one hand on his hip, chin in the air, eyes steady.

But it was still a farce, she feared.

She also feared that her prediction, her own worst-case-scenario of what would happen as a result of this magic, had come true: their nightly liaisons had become an addiction. The release felt good, so they kept doing it, but it was starting to become a problem. The Doctor, in his delirium, was starting to believe he needed it.

"That's sweet, Doctor, but…"

"Not sweet. True. You're beautiful and brilliant, and I'm smitten."

"Smitten."

"I'm in deep smit."

She laughed in spite of herself. "Nice. But you're not smitten."

"No, you're right," he agreed. "I'm in love with you."

She sighed. "Typical."

"Well, I guess I've been a pretty predictable sort of bloke."

"When you phone me from your bedroom at sleepy times, yes."

"Calling from my bedroom, yeah," he mused.

"Isn't that where you are?"

"Yep, can't fool you," he answered. "The second thing I need you to know is… well, turn on your bedroom lights."

"How do you know they're not on, stalker-man?" she laughed. "Are you standing outside the door now?"

"No, I'm in my bedroom, I swear. Just turn them on."

"Okay then," she said, trudging over to the light switch. She looked around the room, and after about five seconds, the Doctor heard her swear once again, and shriek, "What the hell?"

"All right, now, calm down. I can explain."

"What did you do, Doctor?"

"I didn't do anything!"

"My room! It's like…"

"I know…"

"It's like the inside of an egg!"

"Just let me… wait, the inside of an egg? Really?"

"It's totally white! My shelves are gone, my armchair is gone, my closet door is gone, my lavender wall hanging… it's like the inside of an egg, with a bed in it!"

"Hm. Interesting comparison."

"This is so weird! You didn't do this?"

"No, I promise."

"Then what did?"

"Well, that's the third thing I need you to know."

"Well, so far these revelations are going downhill! I'm not sure I want to hear it."

"I need you to come."

A pause. "Come where?" she asked.

"To my room."

"Hello, _déjà vu_. Doctor, I thought we'd got past this."

"Oh, we did. Please? Just come – I promise you won't regret it. And then you can go back to bed if you want."

"Okay," she sighed. "Just let me put some clothes on."

"Good, thanks. I'll see you in a few minutes."

She pulled on the same trousers she'd been wearing before and shoved her phone in her pocket. She had no choice. There was nothing left of her bedroom except for the bed and the clothes now on her person. She couldn't even find her shoes. She had half a mind to bring her pillow and bedspread with her – she was afraid that anything left behind in this room would disappear as soon as she turned her back.

She yawned again as she walked barefooted down the corridors toward the Lewogue sanctuary. She reached for the doorknob, then stopped. She knew that the flagstone chamber beyond led into one side of his room, but she'd need the sonic to open it, which she didn't have. So she went down the hall a bit further and rounded the corner to the door which she thought led underneath the loft in the Doctor's room.

She knocked.

No answer.

She knocked again. "Doctor?"

There was nothing.

"Doctor, are you in there? I'm coming in," she announced.

She opened the door and received a bit of a shock.

A tennis court.

"Er, okay," she said aloud to herself. "That's odd. I guess I had the wrong corridor. Or something?"

It was possible. The TARDIS was a big place. It wasn't inconceivable to think she'd got lost, even after all these months living here.

She shut the door and went back down to the door that led to the Lewogue sanctuary. She opened it, and looked inside. She'd been right. There was the flagstone chamber, covered with trinkets and exuding the ambience of the planet itself.

"Hm," she shrugged. "I guess I was right. But then, where…?"

Martha closed her eyes and tried to picture the Doctor's bedroom as best she could. One side had a door that led into a semi-circular area of cabinets and shelves, and an antique chair by the door. Straight ahead was the bed, to the right was a seating area. Beyond the bed, there was a stairway and loft, beneath which, there was another door. That's how they had got out of the room the last, and only, time she'd been in there. That meant that the two doors were directly across from one another.

She hadn't been wrong. She was sure that that other door should work.

She tried again, and once more, she found a tennis court. She stepped inside and walked in a small circle. She bent down and touched the surface. It was real, all right. Full-sized, green foam, fresh white paint and a regulation net.

"Blimey."

The phone rang in her pocket. She swore at it once again, only this time for a different reason.

"Hello?"

"Marthaaaaa," he sang. "Where aaaaare yoooou?"

"In a tennis court."

"Oh good, it's back."

"Doctor, I'm a bit confused."

"Agh," he dismissed her. "No you're not."

"I'm not?"

"No," he said. "You know exactly what's going on, you're just too shy to say."

She put one hand on her hip, exasperated. "Don't toy with me, Doctor."

"Okay, go back out into the hallway and turn right. Don't forget to shut the door to the tennis court – it's climate-controlled."

"Of course it is. Okay, what do I do after I turn right?"

"Go straight ahead until you run into a dead end. Then turn left."

She followed his directions. "Now what?"

In he echoing depths of the TARDIS, she heard, "_Follow my voice!"_

She shut her phone and called out, _"Call out again so I can follow you!"_

_"Anyone who ever loved (boom boom) would know that I love you..."_ he sang, at the top of his lungs. "_Anyone who ever dreamed (boom boom) would know I dream of you!"_

She couldn't help but giggle, and she knew she was blushing. She heard his voice come from her right, saw a sideways turn and took it. "Okay, I've got you."

She stood at the end of the hall, and saw him leaning out through a door. "Hi."

"Hello," she said. "You've moved."

"Indeed."


	18. Chapter 18

**Hello folks. Final chapter here - the thrilling conclusion of So Tell Me Now, and I Won't Ask Again! Hope you have enjoyed the run.**

**The summer is still young - there's some new stuff on the horizon. Please stay tuned.**

**Thank you for all the wonderful reviews!**

* * *

XVIII

They both walked forward and met in the middle. Their lips met immediately and urgently, and a wave of cautious relief swept over Martha. After a few moments, he stopped kissing her and pulled her into a hug.

"You _do_ get it, don't you?" he asked.

"I think," she said against his chest.

"The TARDIS' equations for harbouring temporally-unstable events indicate that in the last five hours, the quantity of fluctuating continua has decreased by fifty per cent," he said. "I realised it while we were repairing her."

She looked up at him. "Oh, that clears it right up."

He moved backwards and leaned against the wall. "It means that my bedroom has moved out of the Lewogue sanctuary."

"Now _that_ I can see."

"The influence of Aturra the Hart, bringer of great desire, has lifted."

"I see."

"The default, when Aturra and Vaennar are activated together, is manifestation of truth."

"And the truth?"

"Does it need saying again?"

"Erm… no. Wait, yeah. It does."

"The truth is I love you."

She smiled. "I love you, too."

"Well, thank goodness," he said, smirking. "I thought maybe I'd come on too strong."

She sighed, and leaned against the wall beside him. "So, truth is truth?"

"Yep."

"This is how it's meant to be?"

"Yep."

"This means… deep down…"

He inhaled long, and reached over to push a strand of hair behind her ear. "…deep down, I've always loved you. Or at least, deep down, I was destined to love you."

She took a pause, a moment to think. "I wish you could have come up with this on your own."

"Well, I was too thick for that, too hung up on my own stuff. Not that you have a century or two to wait for me to wake up, but I suppose _eventually _I would have taken my head out of… well, anyway , one of the things that Aturra does is clear away debris so that our desires can manifest. He helps us let go of our hang-ups for a while, sets something free."

"Really? I would have thought that would be Vaennar's job."

"Actually, Vaennar puts the debris back in place," the Doctor explained. "That's the only way truth can be told. If we put all the _crap_ back into play, all the things that were standing in our way before, and the desire still remains manifest, then it was meant to be."

"So, in your case, I'd imagine _lots_ of things had to get pushed aside!"

"Well, yeah," he conceded uneasily. He thought about it. How much did he really want to tell her? He knew that they were embarking on something now that would require honesty from both of them, but now was not the time to drag out the baggage. He decided to keep it simple for the moment. "There was this thing that happened on a beach in Norway, a while back. It was… just bloody _awful_. It was one of those moments that makes you think you want to just curl up and die."

"What happened?"

"It's what _didn't_ happen – what I didn't have the chance to do, because I was too slow. I'll tell you about it someday, not now. Anyway, it's been on my mind _all the time_ since it happened. It's been a _major_ distraction, which I didn't realise until today. In order for your desire to manifest, Aturra had to take that memory away from me for a while, along with a few other things. While we were fixing the TARDIS, it came back, but I realised…"

"What?"

"…that I love you, and _that _is stronger than any damage that memory could do to me. And also that I could learn from that experience. Which is why I'm going to say this again, and every chance I get from now on," he was saying, moving to stand in front of her. He took her hands. "Martha Jones, I love you."

She smiled, and tears that she'd been holding back began to spill.

He continued. "And I can love you even with the memories and the psychic debris."

"And tomorrow?"

"I'm surprised you even have to ask," he whispered, kissing her forehead.

"Just for my peace of mind. I've been living for so long having part of you, never all of you. I've had to live with caution, all this time, never trusting your feelings, or my own for that matter. So, tell me now, and I won't ask again."

"I'll still love you tomorrow. And the next day. And next year. I could go on…"

"Thank you," she sighed, wiping her eyes. "Caution takes energy – I don't have it anymore."

"You don't need it."

He took her hand and led her through the door into the bedroom, totally independent of all magic, influences or temporally-unstable events. Well, almost.

When Martha entered, her jaw dropped, and the Doctor smiled.

The golden lighting in his brownish bedroom had turned decidedly lighter, more blue like moonlight, the carpet had gone white, and the seating area to the right was now surrounded with Martha's mahogany bookshelves. She wandered over and fingered the trinkets and books, all her own, now installed in the Doctor's bedroom. She spied her missing armchair beside the Doctor's red sofa and coffee table and ran her hands over the soft upholstery.

Beside the bed, she noticed, a door had appeared. She pointed at it, "Is that…?"

"Take a look."

She ran over and looked inside. It was her closet, filled with her own clothes, shoes, bathrobes, everything the way she'd left it. And finally, on the wall over the bed was her embroidered hanging of rows of lavender plants, bending into the wind.

Smiling, mouth agape, she looked at the Doctor. "Did the TARDIS do this for us?" she asked.

"Yep," he said. "I came in for a kip just after you did. I was only out for half an hour, but when I woke up, it was like this."

She sat down on the end of the bed and shook her head. "Truth manifests…"

"…and combines our bedrooms. I can't think of a better way to illustrate the change in our lives."

"If I went back to my room…"

"It's not there anymore."

"How do you know?"

"I don't. It's just a feeling."

"Well," she said, looking up at him. "It was a place where I spent a lot of time feeling very alone. I suppose it stands to reason that it's gone now."

"Exactly," he said. "You don't ever need to go back there again."

"Good," she replied with finality. She stood up. "Now, you said I could go back to bed."

"Okay. Still sleepy?" he asked, being purposely naïve.

"Nope," she answered, taking his hand.


End file.
